THE TOPOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 



use of by the first survey party was one of Ramsden's 

 zenith-sectors, which Lord Macartney had placed in the 

 hands of Dinwiddie, the astronomer, for sale. A steel 

 chain, which had been sent with Lord Macartney's em- 

 bassy to the Emperor of China and refused, was the 

 only apparatus available for measuring. 



Thus began the Great Trigonometrical Survey of 

 India, a work whose importance it is hardly possible to 

 over-estimate. Conducted successively by Colonel 

 Lambton, Sir George Everest, Sir Andrew Waugh, 

 and Lieut. -Col. Walker (the present superintendent), 

 the trigonometrical survey has been prosecuted with a 

 skill and accuracy which renders it fairly comparable 

 with the best works of European surveyors. But to 

 complete in this style the survey of the whole of India 

 would be the work of several centuries. The trigono- 

 metrical survey of Great Britain and Ireland has been 

 already more than a century in progress, and is still 

 unfinished. It can, therefore, be imagined that the 

 survey of India nearly ten times the size of the 

 British Isles, and presenting difficulties a hundredfold 

 greater than those which the surveyor in England has 

 to encounter is not a work which can be quickly 

 completed. 



But the growing demands of the public service have 

 rendered it imperatively necessary that India should be 

 rapidly and completely surveyed. This necessity led 

 to the commencement of the Topographical Survey of 

 India, a work which has been pushed forward at a sur- 

 prising rate during the past few years. Our readers 



