444 



NA JURE 



[Mair/i II, 1886 



be two opinions as to the abstract desirability of a 

 cadastral survey ; that it would be difficult to conceive a 

 greater boon to the province than would be the existence 

 at the present moment of a complete series of cadastral 

 maps, with their accompanying detailed records of pos- 

 session and of title ; that to measure the extent to which 

 such a record would facilitate administration and promote 

 economic progress, it is only necessary to realise the vast 

 quantity of interminable litigation, more or less connected 

 with the land, that burdens the civil and criminal courts, 

 and drains the resources of the agricultural population. 

 Out of the many criminal cases, true or false, that are 

 brought to determine questions of title or possession in 

 village fields— out of the concurrent and still more 

 harassing civil litigation on the ssme subject — a very 

 great proportion would certainly never have arisen at all, 

 but for the lack of survey records, and in the remainder 

 the same lack places equity and justice at an extreme 

 disadvantage, and prevents the decisions arrived at from 

 being accepted as definitive. The criminal courts decide 

 at most the question of actual possession at the moment : 

 the parties accept the situation for the time, and go away 

 poorer, but not wiser, to renew the contest when oppor- 

 tunity and resources offer. The civil courts work in the 

 dark, sending out "amins" to perform straggling frag- 

 ments of mapping — the outcome of hearsay and village tra- 

 dition rather than of any scientific process — which barely 

 serve as precarious foundations for the court's decree, and 

 do not secure the ready identification of the site when 

 the litigation is in course of time reopened. There is 

 nowhere any stand-point of knowledge or certainty, and 

 every transaction in connection with land is either a 

 litigation or a compromise, in which the strongest wins. 



But the cleansing of this Augean stable is expected to 

 be a work of extreme magnitude and difficulty. A Com- 

 missioner, who is entirely in favour of the experimental 

 introduction of cadastral survey operations, reports that 

 both zamindars who continue to levy rates which ba^e 

 been actually disallowed in courts of justice, and ryots 

 who for years have taken advantage of the absence of a 

 record to hold more land than they pay rent for, are 

 interested in many instances in preventing the truth from 

 being found out, and the appearance of the survey party 

 in any estate will awaken all sorts of fraud and chicanery, 

 all that procrastination, evasion, and quiet opposition at 

 which both zamindars and ryots are such great adepts. 

 To this must be added the opposition which will be 

 offered by interested middlemen of all grades. The 

 cadastral survey will be an opening up of all the sores of 

 the country, a probing of old wounds, and an invitation 

 to all and sundry to come forward and join in the great 

 game of scrambling for rights ; for in Bengal there is 

 next to nothing to go upon. 



Thus a cadastral survey will not be an unmixed 

 blessing, and there are not a few of the higher officials 

 who think it likely to be exceedingly mischievous, and 

 deprecate its being undertaken. It is strongly opposed 

 by all the more powerful zamindars. Still it is probably 

 more alarming in prospect than it will prove to be in 

 reality. With a view to the acquisition of practical 

 e.vperience on the subject, the Government has ordered a 

 cadastral survey of the district of Mozuffinpur, which lies 

 to the north of Patna, to be immediately undertaken as a 

 tentative measure. J. T. \V. 



( To be continued^ 



AERIAL NA VIGA TION 

 'X'HE account given in NATURE (p. 421) of the late 

 ■*■ experiments of the French Government with their 

 " dirigible "' balloon is very interesting and iinportant, and 

 in order to give it its full significance I will ask leave to 

 offer a short explanation of the general state of the 

 question. 



In 1875 I had occasion, in writing an article on balloons 

 for one of our leading Reviews, to call attention to the 

 fact that some skilful and, so far as they went, Successful 

 attempts had been made not long before by two French 

 engineers, MM. Henri Giffard and Dupuy de Lome, to 

 show the possibility of propelling and guiding balloons 

 through the air. 



At that time a general and strong opinion prevailed in 

 England against such a possibility. This opinion was 

 enunciated by various classes of people. In the first 

 place, some writers, taking upon themselves to speak in 

 the name of science, declared that the thing was physic- 

 ally impracticable. The Duke of Argyll, for example, 

 the President of the Aeronautical Society of Great 

 Britain, wrote : — ^ 



"A balloon is incapable of being dii-ecteJ, because it possesses 

 no active force enabling it to resist the currents of the air in 

 which it is immersed, and because, if it had such a force, it 

 would have no fulcrum or resisting medium against which to 

 exert it. It becomes, as it were, part of the atmosphere, and 

 must go with it wherever it goes." 



Then another class of objectors were the aeronauts, 

 who necessarily and properly commanded respect as ex- 

 perts in the practice of ballooning. The cleverest of 

 these, Nadar, declared it was impossible to control the 

 direction of balloons, on account of their lightness and 

 large surface, and he laid down what he considered 

 an important principle, that " pour lutter contre I'air, il 

 faut ctre plus lourd que Fair." One of our most es- 

 teemed and experienced English aeronauts, Mr. Coxwell, 

 held the same view : and another (now, alas ! lamented) 

 expert, Col. Fred. Burnaby, wrote in the Fortnightly 

 Kc-viciu oi May 1884, an article on the " Possibilities of 

 Ballooning," for the express purpose of asserting that the 

 power of guiding them was not one of these possibilities. 

 He professed to show that we were not '• one whit nearer " 

 the solution of this problem than when De Rozier and 

 the Marquis d'Arlandes made the first ascent ; he denied 

 the truth of the French reports of what had been done ; 

 and he offered a present of 100/. to any one who, in a 

 free balloon, would after travelling a certain distance 

 return to his starting-point. And 1 may mention that so 

 strong was the feeling in favour of Col. Burnaby 's asser- 

 tion, that the editor of the Review refused to insert a 

 short and respectful remonstrance against it which I ten- 

 dered to him. Then there were the host of writers in 

 the general Press, the limes at their head, who argued 

 that, as in the century since balloons had been invented 

 nothing had been done, it was clear nothing could ever 

 ] be done, and that the idea of guiding them must be a 

 delusion, which w-as accordingly ridiculed unmercifully. 



All this had an important practical eft'ect ; for our 

 military authorities, who wished to make use of balloons 

 in war, totally ignored all possibility of directing them, 

 i and confined their attention to using them captive for 

 observing stations, as had been done in the battle of 

 Fleurus nearly a century ago. 



As it appeared to me that this opposition and in- 

 credulity were very ill-founded, and that the matter was 

 worth more serious investigation, I sent to the Institution 

 of Civil Engineers " .A Study of the Problem of Aerial 

 Navigation, as aftected by Recent i\Iechanical Improve- 

 ments,'' which they did me the honour to publish in the 

 volume of their I'roieediiigs for the session 1S81-82. I 

 attempted to show, in the first place, that the problem was 

 perfectly amenable to mechanical reasoning, and that its 

 [ successful solution involved nothing inconsistent with the 

 I teachings of mechanical science ; secondly, 1 pointed out 

 I various reasons to account for the failure of early at- 

 tempts to guide balloons : and thirdly, I showed that the 

 result of the recent French experiments, when treated on 

 ordinary mechanical principles, gave fair data for forming 

 an approximate estimate of what might hereafter be done. 



' " Reign of Law," London, i86S, p. 130. 



