1888.] Address. 45 



inch survey of tliat province. The Himalayan party has been workii.g 

 under Colonel Tanner towards Kulu, and the Andaman party has 

 completed the survey of the coasts of the Nicobars. 



In Burma, Captain Hobday, R. E., has been able to get through a 

 large amount of work around Mandalay and towards Thebaw in the 

 Shan States, whilst Colonel Woodthorpe, R. E., has connected his 

 triangulation, carried down the Kyindwin from Manipur, with that of 

 Captain Hobday around Mandalay. The latter officer and Mr. Kennedy 

 have also surveyed portions of the Ruby Mines district. Colonel 

 Woodthorpe, in the early part of 1887, explored the Kubo valley and 

 the basin of the Yeu river, visiting Paungbyin on the Kyindwin and 

 Thaungdut. A special officer has been employed in taking astronomi- 

 cal observations for latitudes from Jabalpur southwards towards Madras, 

 and a party has extended a series of secondary triangles northwards 

 from Madras, over a distance of 170 miles, to fix beacons and the position 

 of prominent land-marks, for the Marine survey. Tidal observations 

 have been taken at seventeen posts by self-registering guages, and lines 

 of spirit levels are being carried from these posts connecting them with 

 the nearest triangulation stations. During the year, Tuticorin was thus 

 connected with Erode, Negapatam with Trichinopali and Cochin, and 

 Marmagoa with Shoranur and Karwar. The reports and maps of the 

 explorations of the surveyor M— H to the North of Nepal have appeared, 

 but those of R — N in eastern Bhutan, are not ready, and have not yet 

 been issued in India. 



Boyal Geographical Society. — The Proceedings of the Royal Geogra- 

 phical Society contain as usual a number of papers that deserve our 

 attention, and amongst them a prominent place must be given to those 

 relating to Tibet and Central Asia. We have here notes of the progress 

 made from time to time by the French travellers M.M. Bonvalot and 

 Camus, who, after suffering much hardship in their adventurous journey 

 across the western highlands from Samarkand, arrived safely in Simla 

 in September last, by way of Chitral and Gilgit. In Major- General 

 Sir H. C. Rawlinson's article on ' the Dragon lake of Pamir', we find 

 that he has discovered, from Mr. Ney Elias' account of his remarkable 

 journey from the neighbourhood of Yengi-Hissar to Shighnan, that the 

 route taken by that traveller is none other than the famous trade-route 

 used by the caravans of Rome passing from Baktria along the 'Vallis 

 Comedarum ' to the Stone-tower on the border of Chinese territory ; 

 and, also, there is reason to believe that it is the same as that used by the 

 great Chinese traveller Hiuen Tsiang in the seventh century. It would 

 appear that there has been some confusion in the Buddhist ideas of 

 geography, in making the Rang-kul, a lake on this route, one with the 



