May 27, 1875] 



NATURE 



72, 



tlic west and east, have been closed. The Straits of the 

 Gulf of Manaar have been reconnoitred, with a view to 

 connecting the triangulation of India with that of Ceylon, 

 which has been found to be feasible. 



Probably the most important features in the operations 

 of the principal triangulation of the year are the re- 

 sumption of the chain of triangles in Burmah, and the 

 completion of the Bangalore Meridional Series for the 

 revision of the southern section of the Great Arc. 



Referring to the revision of certain important triangu- 

 lations which were originally executed ^at the commence- 

 ment of the present century with very inferior instruments, 

 Colonel Walker expresses his conviction that no portion 

 of the principal triangulation remains which will ever 

 require to be revised, and that the last of the old links 

 in all the great chains of triangles which might with any 

 reason have been objected to as weak and faulty, have 

 now been made strong and put on a par with the best 

 modern triangulation. 



The pendulum observations have been completed, and 

 the final results are now being computed and prepared 

 for publication. 



Considerable assistance was, moreover, rendered to 

 Col. Tennant in the operations connected with the obser- 

 vation of the Transit of Venus ; the Appendix contains 

 Mr. Hennessey's account of his observations at Mussooree, 

 the details of which have already appeared in Nature. 



The reports of the various district superintendents are 

 very full, and contain a good deal that is of general 

 interest ; the accompanying district sketch-maps are of 

 great use in enabling one to read these reports with 

 understanding. We shall briefly refer to some of the 

 points of more general interest. 



In Major Branfill's report on the Bangalore Meridional 

 Series, a very interesting phenomenon is noticed in con- 

 nection with the Cape Comorin base-Une. The operations 

 of 1873-74 were intended to close in a side of the polygon 

 around the base-line which had been completed in 

 1868-69 j but it was found that one of the two stations on 

 the side of junction had disappeared. This station was 

 situated on a remarkable group of Red Sand Hills, 

 where, in 1808, Col. Lambton had constructed a station 

 by driving long pickets into the drift sand ; in 1869 Major 

 Branfill, finding no trace of these pickets, had caused a 

 masonry well to be sunk to a depth of ten feet, where it 

 reached what was believed to be firm soil below ; but 

 during the interval of four years this well had been under- 

 mined, and nothing remained thereof but some scattered 

 de^bris. It would appear that the sand hills travel pro- 

 gressively in the direction from west-north-west to east- 

 south-east, which is that of the prevailing winds in this 

 locality ; if Col. Lambton's station was situated on the 

 highest point of the hills and in a similar position rela- 

 tively to the general mass as Major Branfill's, then the 

 hills must have travelled a distance of about 1,060 yards 

 to the E.S.E., for the results of the triangulation show 

 that this is the distance between the positions of the two 

 stations ; thus the rate of progression would be about 

 seventeen yards per annum. From Major Branfill's 

 Notes on the Tinnevelly district, which are appended to 

 the General Report for 1868-69, it appears that certain 

 measurements of the eastward drift had made it as much 

 as 440 yards in the four years 1845-48 ; but the distance 

 between the trigonometrical stations of 1808 and 1869 

 probably affords the most accurate measure which has 

 hitherto been obtained of the rate of progress of this 

 remarkable sand-wave, which gradually overwhelms the 

 villages and fields it meets with in its course, and has 

 never yet been effectually arrested ; numerous attempts 

 have been made, by growing grass and creepers and 

 planting trees on the sands, to prevent the onward drift, 

 Ijut they have hitherto been unsuccessful. 



Mr. Bond, one of Major Branfill's staff, managed to 

 procure an interview with a couple of the wild folk who 



live in the hill jungles of the western Ghdts, to the south- 

 west of the Palanei hills. A strange dwarfish people had 

 often been heard of as frequenting the jungles near the 

 station of Pdmalei, in the north-west corner of the Tinne- 

 velly district, but until Mr. Bond caught these two speci- 

 mens no trace of them had been seen by the members of 

 the Survey. These two people, a man and a woman, 

 believed themselves to be 100 years old, but Mr. Bond 

 supposes the man to be about twenty-five, and the woman 

 eighteen years of age. "The man," Mr. Bond states, 

 " is 4 feet 6| inches in height, 26J inches round the chest, 

 and 18J inches horizontally round the head over the eye- 

 brows. He has a round head, coarse black, woolly hair, 

 and a dark brown skin. The forehead is low and slightly 

 retreating ; the lower part of the face projects like the 

 muzzle of a monkey, and the mouth, which is small and 

 oval, with thick lips, protrudes about an inch beyond his 

 nose ; he has short bandy legs, a comparatively long body, 

 and arms that extend almost to his knees : the back just 

 above the buttock is concave, making the stern appear to 

 be much protruded. The hands and fingers are dumpy 

 and always contracted, so that they cannot be made to 

 stretch out quite straight and flat ; the palms and fingers 

 are covered with thick skin (more particularly so the tips 

 of the fingers), and the nails are small and imperfect ; 

 the feet are broad and thick skinned all over ; the hairs 

 of his moustache are of a greyish white, scanty and coarse 

 like bristles, and he has no beard. 



" The woman is 4 feet 6^ inches in height, 27 inches 

 round the chest (above the breasts), and 19^- horizontally 

 round the head above the brows ; the colour of the skin 

 is sallow, or of a nearly yellow tint ; the hair is black, 

 long, and straight, and the features well formed. There 

 is no difference between her appearance and that of the 

 common women of that part of the country. She is 

 pleasant to look at, well developed, and modest." Their 

 only dress is a loose cloth, and they eat flesh, but feed 

 chiefly on roots and honey. 



" They have no fixed dwelling places, but sleep on any 

 convenient spot, generally between two rocks or in caves 

 near which they happen to be benighted. They make a 

 fire and cook what they have collected during the day, 

 and keep the fire burning all night for warmth and to keep 

 away wild animals. They worship certain local divinities 

 of the forest— RAkas or Rdkdri, and Pd (after whom the 

 hill is named, Pd-malei)." 



The woman cooks for and waits on the man, eating only 

 after he is satisfied. 



The means taken for tidal observations in the Gulf of 

 Kutch promise to lead to valuable result?. The object of 

 these observations is to ascertain whether secular changes 

 are taking place in the relative level of the land and sea at 

 the head of the gulf. Very great difificulties were found 

 in selecting suitable stations for fixing the tide-gauges, as 

 the foreshores of the gulf consist mainly of long mud- 

 banks, which often stretch miles into the sea, and are left 

 bare at low water, when they are intersected by innumer- 

 able tortuous and shallow creeks, whose shifting channels 

 would be very unfavourable positions for tide-gauges. 

 Only three points suitable for tidal stations were met with 

 on the coasts of the gulf : at Hanstal Point, near the head 

 of the gulf; at NowanAr Point, half-way up, on the 

 Northern or Kutch coast ; and at Okha Point, on the 

 southern coast, opposite the island of Beyt. None of 

 these points, however, are situated in ports or harbours, 

 where piers, jetties, landing-stages, or docks might have 

 been utilised ; on the contrary, they are all situated at 

 some distance from the nearest inhabited localities, and 

 present no facilities whatever. The operations had thus 

 to be of the very simplest nature. The only practicable 

 plan was to have the tide-gauges set up on shore, over 

 wells sunk near the high-water line, and connected with 

 the sea by piping. The wells are iron cylinders, with an 

 internal diameter of twenty-two inches, which slightly 



