May 17, 1906] 



NA JURE 



67 



the Quirinal to the delegates of foreign Governments and 

 societies. Both the King and Queen received the visitors, 

 among whom were six British delegates!. .-\fter the 

 banquet the King, who takes great interest in the in- 

 dustrial revival now taking place in Italy, held a reception, 

 several of the Italian ministers being present. The next 

 day most of the members of the congress departed from the 

 beautiful and hospitable city which had been the scene of 

 their labours, many with the intention of returning if 

 possible. 



THE SURVEY OF INDIA. 

 T^Hli report' of the Indian Survey Committee recently 

 received is contained in two volumes, the size of 

 which should be sullicient testimony to the exhaustive 

 nature of the inquiry. The result, on the whole, should 

 be satisfactory to those who for years past have been 

 protesting against the short-sighted policy of the Indian 

 Government, which, under financial pressure, has often 

 forced reductions on the Survey Department until its 

 efficiency has become seriously impaired. There is hardly 

 a reform suggested by the committee which has not been 

 urged previously in India. Sir John Farquharson (president 

 of the committee, whose death so soon after iiis return 

 to ICngland was almost tragic) but e.xpressed the opinions 

 of many who have been closely associated with the Indian 

 Survey Department, modified more or less by his own 

 experiences as chief of the Ordnance Survey in England. 



I'he main results of the committee's recommendations 

 are, first, the strengthening of the department in men 

 and money, and secondly, the separation of the cadastral 

 (or revenue) from the topographical and trigonometrical 

 branches in order that proper supervision may be given to 

 the latter, and that the general military maps of the 

 peninsula and the frontier may be brought (and kept) up 

 10 date. Cadastral surveys will in future be relegated to 

 local governments, who will be responsible for the main- 

 tenance of their own revenue maps ; but scientific super- 

 vision of this local work will be provided from the depart- 

 ment. This indeed is essential, as everybody knows who 

 has had experience of the terrible results of local meddling 

 with original survey mapping by half-trained, or wholly 

 ignorant, native employees. Nor is the fact overlooked that 

 all the extreme refinement of the most accurate geodetic 

 triangulation has its final expression in these revenue maps. 

 The larger the scale and the more restricted the area, the 

 greater the necessity for a positively accurate basis for 

 local traversing. Every little village plan must take its 

 place accurately in the provincial map if titles to property 

 are to be of any account. 



The recommendations of the committee regarding the 

 topographical mapping of India and the reproduction of 

 maps appear on the whole to be excellently well adapted to 

 the end in view, in spite of a certain amount of dissent in 

 matters of detail recorded by the present Surveyor-General. 

 Due acknowledgment is made to the late Surveyor-General 

 (Colonel Gore) for the accuracy of his estimate of the 

 amount of revision necessary, and the cost in time and 

 money of carrying it out ; and a most appropriate despatch 

 from a former Secretary of State for India (1876) is quoted, 

 in which the fallacy of expecting to effect economies by 

 the reduction of well-trained survey parties is emphatically 

 maintained. That fallacy was, however, supported by the 

 then Government in India, and was supported by every 

 Government since, until the arrival of a geographical expert 

 as \ iceroy in Lord Curzon. The topographical maps of 

 all India, on the i-inch per mile scale, are to be thoroughly 

 revised and completed. It is something of a surprise that 

 mapping on this scale was not completed long ago, as 

 there has been nothing important missing from the general 

 map of India for several years past. The method of re- 

 construction recommended by the committee is not 

 altogether approved by the present Surveyor-General, who 

 is in favour of more decentralisation in order to gain 

 efficient supervision ; but there was no dispute as to the 

 paramount necessity of maintaining one standard map of 



^ "Report of the Itidian Survey Committee, 1904-5." Part i.. The 

 Report, pp. vi + i5T. Part ii., pp. v-f223. (Simla: The Government 

 Central Printing Office, 1905.) 



the whole of India in a state of absolute completeness. 

 Nor can the recommer.dations with reference to frontier 

 mapping be regarded with anything but satisfaction. The 

 appointment of a special superintendent on the frontier to 

 rank with the superintendent of trigonometrical surveys, 

 with five working parties under him, and three officers 

 attached to each party, and with the headquarters office 

 at Siinla in touch with the Intelligence Department, is 

 indeed a big concession to military requirements. A 

 similar, but much smaller, scheme was suggested nearly 

 ten years ago, in the days when two or three oflicers and 

 one elastic party were considered ample to deal with the 

 Indian borderland from the Indus to the Euphrates; but 

 it was not entertained. Trans-frontier surveys, apart from 

 political boundary requirements, were not recognised as 

 of any importance. It depended entirely on the enterprise 

 of the officer in charge of the frontier party whether any 

 such work was carried out at all ; it was regarded as rather 

 beyond the scope of strict departmental business — to be 

 perinitted (if no complications with tribes-people were in- 

 volved), but hardly to be approved. 



.-\ny effort to render frontier mapping more effective by 

 ensuring its proper distribution amongst the military offices 

 of the frontier was perhaps beyond the scope of the com- 

 mittee's proceedings, but it can hardly be denied that proper 

 map distribution is only second in importance to map 

 making. 



The reproduction of maps has always been the great 

 difficulty of the Indian Survey Department. Climate, 

 material, and personnel are all against the reproduction of 

 clear, readable, and artistic maps from the excellent 

 material which is found in the original field-sheets. Dr. 

 Stein's evidence on this point is very suggestive. Whilst 

 condemning the printed maps, he paid a graceful tribute 

 to the artistic value of the originals. Photozincography 

 has had much to answer for ; misplaced economy, resulting 

 in inferior material and a staff absolutely inadequate to 

 deal with the mass of work thrust upon it, has completed 

 the tale of ultimate inefficiency. We doubt if the well- 

 meant efforts of the committee will really do much to 

 raise the low standard of Indian map publishing so long 

 as cheap rates form the ruling motive of the publishing 

 office. Partial engraving and heliozincography are steps 

 in the right direction, however, but it has always appeared 

 to us that the employment of a first-class firm in England 

 to undertake all the finer work of the department is the 

 real panacea for the ills that beset Calcutta map printing. 

 There is no dealing with the inertness of the native by 

 means of committees. Colonel Grant points out that one 

 girl in England will do as much as two (native) men in 

 the Calcutta otKce. It may be so _(so long as girls do 

 not subscribe to trades unions), but he ignores the effects 

 of a climate that affects Europeans and natives alike. 



The general report on the Indian Survey for 1903-4 ' 

 serves as a useful commentary on the recommendations of 

 the committee which was sitting at the time that this 

 rather belated report was under compilation. From it we 

 are able to gather an idea of the enormous expansion in the 

 widely diffused work of the department which has occurred 

 within late years, and of the mass of material which 

 has been crowded into the over-weighted publication offices. 

 The report deals with certain administr.itive changes 

 (such as the amalgamation of the forest surveys) which 

 are unimportant when considered by the light of the sub- 

 sequent recommend.'xtions of the committee ; and much of 

 it is concerned with the progress of cadastral, or revenue, 

 surveys, which will in future probably form but an in- 

 significant feature in the general programme. 



Referring to the developments that are proposed in topo- 

 graphical (or military survev) branches of the department, 

 we naturally turn to the map published in the report to 

 illustrate the actual position of these surveys at present. 

 The completion and maintenance of a i-inch per mile map 

 of the whole peninsula area, and the extension of accurate 

 surveys into extra-peninsula regions, is one of the main 

 features of the revised programme. The map, however, for 

 this purpose is rather inisleading, for we find a great part 



NO. 1907, VOL. 74] 



General Report on the Operations < 

 ■ the Government of India dur'ne 

 Pp. iv-t-62-t-xlii. (Calcutta: Offic 

 Printing. 190;.) Price 3s. 



Fthe Survey of Ind'a administered 

 go3-4." r,y Col. J. R. Hobday, 

 of the Superintendent of Govern- 



