lxxx Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XII. 



gentlemen, we do want your advice in every problem that 

 comes before us. We want it most insistently on all the great 

 questions of industrial advance, which are of high importance 

 to India at this particular juncture of her history. We want 

 your advice and help in questions of public health, in dealing 

 with disease and in ameliorating the physical condition of the 

 people. We want your psychology in what is possibly the most 

 important and greatest of all our problems, the problem of 

 education, and we want your help very particularly in the task 

 of increasing the agricultural productivity of our land. In 

 every one of these problems we have to thank science for the 

 timely help that it has already given us. 



It would probably be uncongenial to them if I attempted 

 to express the indebtedness of this province to some of my own 

 colleagues, such as Major Sprawson in his investigations in 

 tubercular disease, or Mr. Leake in his enquiries into the cotton 

 plant. I may, however, be permitted to express the indebted- 

 ness which we owe in this province to one institution that lies 

 outside our borders, the great Research Institute at Pusa, 

 worthily represented here to-day, which has laid its indelible 

 mark of beneficence upon the welfare of our rural millions. 



And now, ladies and gentlemen, I will not stand for another 

 moment between you and the joys of the presidential address. 

 I beg you once again respectfully to accept our greetings in 

 Lucknow, our gratitude that you have selected it as your 

 meeting place this year, and our hope that when your work is 

 over, you will carry away some pleasant recollections of our 

 fair city." 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



THE PLAINS OP NORTHERN INDIA AND THEIR 

 RELATIONSHIP TO THE HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS. 



By Colonel Sir Sidney G. Burrard, K.C.8.I., R.E., 



F.R.S., President of the Congress. 



Plates A and B. 



When I learnt that the Committee of the Indian Science 

 Congress had honoured me by electing me the President for 

 the year and by asking me to give an address to this meeting, 

 I decided to invite the attention of the Congress to the un- 

 solved problems surrounding the formation of mountains. The 

 scientific world is now divided into numerous branches of 

 specialists following their own roads, but the study of moun- 

 tains belongs to no specialist branch; it is not a road, but a 

 junction of many roads, and geologists and astronomers, 

 physicists and mathematicians, geographers and geodesists all 

 meet at that junction for discussion. I have approached the 

 question from the roads of geography and geodesy, and 1 



