28 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [No. 1, 
sion I will, as I did at our last annual meeting, remark briefly on these 
while reviewing the record of our proceedings during the past year. 
Two, perhaps, of the most interesting papers which have been 
contributed were those read by Major Walker and Major Montgomerie 
at our February and April meetings. Both supplied valuable geo- 
eraphical information on countries within and across our frontier,— 
information which was likely to fall within the reach only of officers 
employed, as they were, on the survey of our Indian Empire. Those 
of us who attended the April meeting and saw the photographie 
sketch of the large Baltaro and neighbouring glaciers that Captain 
Montgomerie then exhibited, must all feel equally eager for further 
communications from the officers engaged on the Kashmir series of 
that great survey. 
One suggestion which on that occasion fell from Captain Mont- 
gomerie and which Major Walker is, I am aware, now discussing with 
the Government, I especially commend to the consideration and warm 
support of our Society. The field of Captain Montgomerie’s duties 
brings him in contract with traders and travellers who pass without 
question beyond our frontier and who visit without risk those cities 
of Turkistan to which an European cannot safely penetrate. Why 
should we not, asks Captain Montgomerie, do our best to turn the 
services of such men to account? Some few among them he already 
knows to be partially competent and to admit of being made more so, 
and by cautious training on our part the ranks of such men may be 
increased. I have lately heard further from Captain Montgomerie 
on this important subject, and have laid his letter before the Council, 
which will deal with it at their next meeting. 
Later in the year another communication was read by Major 
Walker, who, on that occasion, acknowledged the obligations of the 
Trigonometrical Survey to the investigations of Archdeacon Pratt. 
The result of those investigations, which have extended over some 
years, and the value of which has been more fully recognised in 
Europe than in this country, has been condensed by the Archdeacon 
in a memo. which was published in the 2nd No. of our Journal, and 
was concisely announced by him in the remarks which he made at 
our meeting on Major Walker’s paper. It was to the effect that 
“the distances between places determined by the Survey are free 
7 
from the effects of errors caused by local attraction ;” a result which 
