eS 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 1107 
of a distant past, when the features of the earth’s surface were not precisely as now, 
and lands which we see high above our horizon lay deep beneath the ocean, and life 
existed in other forms, whose mute records we possess in the fossils—the likha-kdn, 
or written stones as they are significantly called by the people of Afghanistan— 
which, after long lying entombed among the rocks, are presented to modern sight 
as revelations of life’s early dawn; it investigates what Baron Richtofen describes 
as the reciprocal causal relations of the three kingdoms—land, water, and atmosphere; 
it seeks to determine the processes hy which in some parts of the globe continents 
were built up with their varied sculpture of mountain and valley, of highly eleyated 
plateau and low lying plain, of lakes and inland seas, and great river systems,— 
while in other parts land was depressed below the sea level, or broken up into the 
4slands which are now dotting the surface of the ocean; and it endeavours to trace 
a. process of continuous evolution of life from the primary and simplest types which 
perished in the early ages of the earth’s history, to the latest and most highly de- 
veloped types which are now flourishing around us. Going back still further it 
searches for evidence of the first beginnings of the material universe ; it looks beyond 
the orbit of the most distant planet of the solar system, and scrutinises the bound- 
jess regions of stellar space to find, in the widely scattered particles of the nebule, 
the beginnings of new solar systems and new worlds such as ours; there it may be 
said to behold as in a mirror the formation of our own planet as a fluid igneous 
mass thrown off with great velocity from its sun, and rapidly revolving, and then 
becoming spheroidal, and slowly cooling and solidifying, and finally acquiring the 
crust which was to become an abode for life, the stage whereon man was to play out 
the drama of his planetary existence, and be held all the while fast imprisoned and 
out of touch with the surrounding universe. 
More than this we would seek to know, but in vain; in passing from the early 
dawn of matter to that of life, science finds its career of wonderful achievement in 
the one direction exchanged for failure and disappointment in the other; it cannot 
discover the origin of life in any of its existing material forms, nor trace to its 
birthplace the spiritual life which exerts such an influence on what is material ; 
it cannot ascertain whether man had a prior existence as different from his present 
existence as the first beginnings of his planet home differed from its present con- 
dition ; it cannot gauge the truth of the poet’s prescient conception that 
‘ Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting 
And cometh from afar.’ 
It whispers faint suggestions regarding the possible future of the planet ; but when 
questioned as to what is to follow the coming soul’s setting of man, the planet’s 
chief glory and dignity, it has nothing to reply, but is hopelessly dumb and 
inarticulate. 
Scientific geography embraces a wide range of subjects, wider than can be 
claimed for any other department of science. ‘Thus the President of this Section 
has a vast field from which to gather subjects for his opening address, I shall, 
however, restrict my address to the subject with which Iam most familiar, and 
give you some account of the Survey of India, and more particularly of the labours 
of the trigonometrical or geodetic branch of that survey, in which the best years 
of my life have been passed. 
I must begin by pointing out that the survey operations in India have been very 
varied in nature, and constitute a blending together of many diverse ingredients. 
Their origin was purely European, nothing in the shape of a general survey haying 
been executed under the previous Asiatic Governments; lands had been measured 
in certain localities, but merely with a view to acquiring some idea of the relative 
areas of properties, in assessing on individuals the share of the revenue levied on a 
community; but other factors than area—such as richness or poverty of soil, and 
proximity or absence of water—influenced the assessment, and often in a greater 
degree, so that very exact measurements of area were not wanted for revenue 
purposes, and no other reason then suggested itself why lands should be accurately 
43Bn2 
