June 12, 19 19] 



NATURE 



293 



INDIAN SURVEY REPORT. 

 ^PHE records of the Survey of Ind'a, vol. xi. 

 ^ (supplementary to the General Report, 19 16-17), 

 lading the Annual Report of Parties and Offices, 

 iyit)-i7, contain little that can be considered as 

 matter of wide scientific interest or of great im- 

 portance from either the geodetic or the geographical 

 point of view. It is the usual summary of excellent 

 work completed by the officers of the Survey of India 

 Department, amply illustrated by special charts and 

 tables of the results of scientific observations, which 

 occupy a very large space in the report. 



The department was necessarily short-handed 

 owing to the absence on active service of many of its 

 officers, and one or two of those special branches of 

 research which have been systematically undertaken 

 by the scientific experts of the Trigonometrical 

 Survey have been temporarily suspended. Thus there 

 are no fresh records of pendulum, or of latitude, 

 observations such as have lately added so much valu- 

 able evidence* to investigations dealing with the force 

 of gravity; but there is a useful summary of the 

 conditions under which some of the early pendulum 

 observations were taken (notably those of Col. Basevi 

 at Mor^), which will serve as a guide to future in- 

 vestigators. The conclusion expressed by Col. Lenox 

 Conyngham is to the effect that " the Mord observa- 

 tions are too uncertain for any argument to be based 

 on them" — a conclusion which was more or less 

 anticipated by Prof. Borrass, of the Prussian Geodetic 

 Institute, and Mr. R. D. Oldham. It is a question 

 of instrumental stability, not of personal accuracy in 

 observation. 



No new base line was measured during the year 

 under review. There are, on the other hand, very 

 complete tables of the results of the Magnetic Survey 

 under Mr. Bond, a subject which has lately derived 

 increasing public interest from the investigations of 

 Mr. E. A. Reeves, of the Royal Geographical Society's 

 staff, who has published the results of a new method 

 of reduction of the dip angle to a common line of 

 reference provided by the axis of the "earth's rotation, 

 and proved that curves of equal dip are approxi- 

 mately coincident with parallels of latitude. Mr. 

 Reeves's views on this subject, fully illustrated, will 

 be found in the March issue of the Journal of the 

 society. 



First-class triangulation appears to have been con- 

 fined to the Madura Series, and some useful hints 

 mav be derived from the report as to methods of 

 dealing with those flat, jungle-covered regions of 

 w'hich there is such a superabundance in the un- 

 triangulated spaces of the earth. This is really _ a 

 far more important matter for investigation and dis- 

 cussion than it may appear to be at first sight. The 

 topographical section of the report confines itself to 

 the details of the most practical side of surveying. 

 There is nothing of an exploratory nature about them. 

 The work of transfrontier reconnaissance is in abey- 

 ance, and nothing is said about Mesopotamia. 



An illustrated section of the report, which deals 

 with the representation of "relief" in maps by means 

 of a series of coloured plates, would perhaps meet 

 with a certain amount of criticism if it were brought 

 a little more into public view by inclusion in some 

 well-known periodical. One great fault of the Indian 

 Survey reports is that the popular side of them is not 

 sufficiently within reach of the public. Map repro- 

 duction generally, and the best way of representing 

 relief, are, in these davs of a greatly increased interest 

 in geography, subjects on which there are many 

 opinions and wide divergences of view. The methods 

 adopted by the Indian Survey are admittedly not 

 entirely satisfactory, and the difficulties in the way 



NO. 2589, VOL. 103] 



of making them satisfactory are fairly well explained 

 in this report. It would certainly be useful if such 

 an important map-producing department as that of 

 the Survey of India could inaugurate a discussion 

 (especially on the subject of a colour scheme) in which 

 the public which uses its maps could express a free 

 opinion. T. H. H. 



SUB-ANTARCTIC WHALES AND 

 WHALING.^ 



'X'HE history of whaling in northern waters, and 

 -*■ of the hunting of sperm whales in warmer seas, 

 has often been written, and some of the principal facts 

 relating to these subjects are matters of common 

 knowledge. There is reason to believe that the exist- 

 ence of a whaling industry, which was inaugurated 

 just outside the South Polar circle after the com- 

 mencement of the present century, is by no means 

 generally known. Although Capt. Cook, Sir James 

 Ross, and others had many years before reported the 

 presence of whales in those latitudes, no practical 

 advantage was taken of the information until 

 fourteen years ago; and since that date the industry 

 has eclipsed in importance all that had been done 

 previously, even when the Greenland whale "fishery" 

 was at its height. 



In 1892 Capt. C. A. Larsen left Norway for the 

 Far South, which he reached in the October of that 

 year. No whaling was done, and an expedition to 

 the same regions, fitted out by Capt. Svend Foyn in 

 the next year, was also unproductive of whales, 

 mainly for the reason that it had been intended to 

 hunt right whales and sperm whales. The Nor- 

 wegian captains brought home, however, a very vivid 

 impression of the enormous number of whales fre- 

 quenting sub-Antarctic waters ; and the fact that they 

 at first made no further ventures was due to the 

 profitable nature of the whaling in the neighbourhood 

 of the Norwegian coasts. Dr. W. S. Bruce had simul- 

 taneously (1^2) accompanied four vessels of the 

 Dundee whaling fleet to the Antarctic, and had been 

 similarly impressed with the abundance of whales in 

 these waters. A meeting was shortly afterwards held 

 in the rooms of the Royal Scottish Geographical 

 Society at Edinburgh to advocate the use of the 

 modern Norwegian methods of whaling in the South ; 

 but the proposal was not carried, and no practical 

 steps were taken. 



Capt. Lar§en afterwards became the commander 

 of the Antarctic, the exploring vessel of Dr. O. 

 Nordenskjold's Swedish South Polar Expedition, 

 1901-3. The Antarctic was wrecked; and Capt. 

 Larsen, on his return journev, found himself at 

 Buenos Aires, where in 1904 he founded the Compania 

 Argentina de Pesca, the first whaling company which 

 undertook operations in the Far South. This com- 

 pany commenced work at South Georgia in 1905, 

 while the South Shetland Islands were visited with 

 the same object in 1906, and the South Orkney 

 Islands in 191 1. The operations have proved so suc- 

 cessful that there are now numerous companies whal- 

 ing at South Georgia and the South Shetlands, a 

 large proportion being Norwegian. While the most 

 successful whalers in the Greenland industry from the 

 seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries were the 

 British and the Dutch, the Norwegians have almost 

 a monopoly of the art at the present time, and nearly 

 all the skilled workers are of that nationality. 



The older whalers hunted with hand-harpoons from 

 small boats, provided with sails and oars, which were 



1 From n d-seourse delivered .Tt tlie Roy.il Institution on Fridav, May i6. 

 by Dr. S. F. Harmer, F.R.S. (Published by permission of the Trustees of 

 the British Museum.) 



