432 TRANS ACTIO JJS OF SECTION k. 



of the work done are given from year to year in the Annual Report of the 

 Colonial Survey Committee, which was first published in 1905. These reports, 

 accompanied by plans and diagrams, contain most valuable information and 

 show exactly what has been done, the method employed, cost of surveys, &c. 

 All who are interested in these matters would be well repaid by a careful 

 perusal of these valuable publications, which only cost a few shillings. 



From its very foundation the Royal Geographical Society has had a remark- 

 able influence on the surveying and mapping of the earth's surface, and 

 especially those parts of it which have been previously but very imperfectly 

 known or entirely unexplored. I think it must be admitted that this influence 

 has increased as years have gone by, and it is no exaggeration to say that it has 

 done more in this respect than any other body. It is therefore perhaps fitting 

 that I should give some account of what has been accomplished, as it has a 

 direct bearing on route-surveying and mapping by travellers and explorers. 

 It is not only by the awarding of annual medals to explorers whose journeys 

 have resulted in an increase to our geographical knowledge, and the more 

 accurate surveying and mapping of little-known parts, that the Society has 

 stimulated and encouraged geographical research, but it has also assisted finan- 

 cially numerous expeditions, and the money thus granted has enabled many a 

 man to carry out his explorations to a successful issue, which he otherwise 

 could not have done for the want of funds. Still more frequently has it been 

 the case that travellers going into little-known parts of the world have been 

 granted loans of surveying instruments which they could not otherwise have 

 taken, and encouraged to do what mapping they found possible. Altogether 331 

 expeditions have been lent instruments, and about 38,500/. have been devoted to 

 grants of money by the Society to further geographical exploration and 

 surveying. 



There is still another way, by no means the least important, in which the 

 Royal Geographical Society has done much to promote geographical surveying, 

 and that is by providing suitable instruction in the work of surveying for 

 travellers. It is all very well to grant money and lend instruments, but the 

 important thing is to know how to make good use of the money and the instru- 

 ments so as to take proper advantage of opportunities afforded and to do the 

 best surveys and maps of the regions visited. In the early days of the Society a 

 man had to pick up the requisite knowledge as best he could, but in 1879 a 

 scheme of proper instruction was started at the suggestion of the late Sir 

 Clements Markham, who was then one of our Honorary Secretaries. This had 

 small beginnings, but in recent years has made rapid strides, until at present it 

 forms one of the most important parts of the Society's work. This course of 

 instruction in geographical surveying, which has now been in existence for about 

 thirty-eight years, was first conducted by my predecessor, the late Mr. John 

 Coles, and, since he resigned in 1900, has been under my charge. Altogether 

 725 surveyors and explorers have received instruction, without reckonino- special 

 large classes of forty or fifty men which during the past few years, until the 

 outbreak of war, have been sent to us by the Colonial Office to learn the more 

 elementary parts of compass-traversing and mapping. 



Now as regards the future. The demand for properly trained geographical 

 surveyors has been steadily increasing in past years, and is likely to be still 

 greater as time goes on. After the termination of the war there will be much 

 work to be done, especially as regards the surveying of new boundaries, and 

 freshly acquired districts in Africa and elsewhere; and it would be wise to 

 make preparations for this well ahead. 



The future surveyor will be in a much better position than his predecessors, 

 not only on account of the improvements in instruments and apparatus for his 

 work, but because, in many parts, a good beginning has been made with the 

 triangulation to which the new surveys can be adjusted. In Asia a considerable 

 amount of new work of this kind has been done over the frontier of India in 

 recent years by the Survey of India, among the more important of which is 

 the connecting of the Indian triangulation with that of Russia by way of 

 the Pamirs. The many boundary surveys that have been carried out in Africa, 

 the triangulations of Egypt, the Soudan, East and South Africa, and other parts 

 of the continent are well advanced, and will be of the utmost value to the future 



