440 THE INDIAN FOREST SURVEY. [Nov. 



for it is very important that something of the sort should be placed 

 as soon as possible in the hands of the officers who are charged 

 uith the management of the forests. 



When the survey party takes the field at the beginning of the 

 cold season, the officer in charge finds himself in command of a 

 small army of 25 to 30 surveyors, European and native, and 

 perhaps 150 to 200 chainmen, flagmen, and others, for whose 

 accommodation tents, clothes, food, and cooking apparatus have to 

 be carried ; then there are the instruments and tools required for 

 the work, so that the amount of baggage is very considerable. To 

 carry all this he has to liire camels or bullock- carts, and the whole 

 party then marches by stages of from twelve to fifteen miles a day 

 from its headquarters to the scene of the work, where the men are 

 at once distributed over the ground. Each native surveyor is 

 provided with the requisite number of chainmen and flagmen, as 

 well as with the needful instruments and tools, and a definite piece 

 of work is assigned to him. Eour or five native surveyors are placed 

 under the orders of one European surveyor, who is held responsible 

 to the superintendent for the work done by them ; it is his business 

 to visit them constantly and check their work, himself giving the 

 finishing touches to it, and he has a piece of independent work of 

 his own in hand at the same time on which to occupy himself 

 when he finds the opportunit}'. A camp computing office is 

 established in some central position, and such computations as are 

 needed at once are worked out as the field-books are sent in. The 

 survey thus proceeds in the field for some six or eight months, and 

 when, with the increasing heat, the forests begin to become 

 unhealthy, or when sufficient work of this kind has been accom- 

 plished, the party moves back to headquarters. Chainmen and 

 flagmen are then discharged, or placed on half-pay, and the rest of 

 the establishment is employed either in drawing maps or in 

 computing the triangulation for the next session's work. 



Considerable skill and experience are needed for the efficient 

 control of such work, which if not properly supervised and arranged, 

 is sure to show this in inferior quality, insufficient quality or high 

 rates. No hard-and-fast rules can be laid down for the execution 

 of surveys ; the officer in charge must vary the procedure according 

 to circumstances, with reference to the nature of the ground and 

 the requirements of each particular case in the way of amount and 

 accuracy of detail. It is of course quite possible to produce 

 accurate detailed maps of the most unpromising country if time and 

 money are of no importance ; but as this is not usually the case, it 

 has to be carefully considered how a map that will answer the 

 required purpose can be produced in the shortest possible time and 



