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 NOTICES OF BOOKS. 



A Memoir on the Indian Surveys. By Clements B. Markham. 

 Printed by order of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for 

 India in Council. W. H. Allen and Co., 13, Waterloo Place. 

 London, 187 1. 



The object of this work is to furnish a general view of all the 

 surveying and other geographical operations in India from 

 their commencement. It is divided into seventeen sections, 

 comprising the Indian Marine Surveys ; route surveys ; the 

 trigonometrical, topographical, geological, and archaeological 

 surveys ; meteorological and tidal observations ; astronomical 

 observations ; and the physical geography of India It would 

 be impossible to give a comprehensive review of a volume em- 

 bodying so much information, hitherto contained only in official 

 records, or scattered amongst the pages of almost innumerable 

 publications, within the scope of which we are limited ; a few 

 remarks only to show the nature of the book before us must 

 therefore suffice. The records from which information has been 

 gleaned date back over 250 years. " The Surveys of India began 

 along the coasts, and the sailors preceded the shore-going 

 surveyors by nearly 200 years. Before India could be measured 

 it was necessary to get there ; and the history of Indian 

 Surveying takes us back to the day when James Lancaster's 

 fleet of four ships and a victualler got under way from Torbay, 

 on the 2nd of May, 1601." Richard Hakluyt, it appears, was 

 appointed historiographer of the East Indies in the same year ; 

 to him was entrusted the custody of all the journals of the East 

 India voyages, and he gave lectures relating to them to the 

 students at Oxford. The records of early voyages and of the 

 surveys made by the Bombay Marine reached from 1601 to 1830. 

 These latter were continued by the Indian Navy from 1832 to 

 1862, when it was arranged that all further surveys that might 

 be required should be conducted by the Royal Navy. 



The land survey and mapping of British India have advanced 

 with the acquisitions of territory ; they were commenced when 

 the first battles were fought and the first provinces gained. 

 Rennell, the father of Indian geography, served under Clive, the 

 conqueror of Plassy. At that time all existing knowledge of 

 India, derived from routes of solitary travellers and rough charts 

 of the coasts, had just been collected and utilised by the great 

 French geographer, D'Anville. His map of India appeared five 

 years before the date of the battle of Plassy; and eight years after- 

 wards Rennell was at work in the newly acquired territory of Bengal 

 and Behar, laying the foundation for the construction of a map 

 which was destined to succeed the admirable work of D'Anville. 

 Brief accounts of the Trigonometrical, Topographical, Revenue, 



