316 STATISTICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 



bear, while in each province a paid editor was answerable for the 

 completion of the provincial account ; the general supervision of 

 the undertaking resting with Mr. Hunter, as Director-General of 

 Statistics to the Government of India. 



The district forms the administrative unit in India, and the 

 province the administrative whole. The statistical survey groups 

 all the district materials into fifteen provincial accounts or 

 gazetteers. 



The Feudatory States and Chiefdoms, exceeding 300 in number, 

 with 50,000,000 of people, were from the first placed outside of the 

 scope of the statistical survey, as it was thought the native princes 

 would have misunderstood any attempt at systematic investigations. 

 Steps were taken, however, to collect some of the information 

 already existing with regard to Native States ; but no regular survey 

 was attempted, and a census of the territories did not exist, there- 

 fore, as a whole, the results as to feudatory India are far inferior to 

 the rest. This was due to the political exigencies of the case, which 

 were of course beyond the control of the Director- General of 

 Statistics. 



The reduction of the numerous volumes of the Statistical Survey 

 to a practicable size for general reference was the last stage of the 

 undertaking, the results of this being the nine volumes of the 

 " Imperial Gazetteer." A list of towns, rivers, mountains, historic 

 sites, religious resorts, commercial fairs, harbours, or other places 

 of importance, were compiled from returns contributed by the 

 provincial editors and district officers. Eleven thousand names were 

 thus arranged in alphabetical order and printed in a folio volume, 

 and after that they had been checked by the local governments, 

 about 8,000 places were selected for inclusion in the " Imperial 

 Gazetteer." A few model articles were also drawn up for the 

 guidance of the contributors, showing paragraph by paragraph the 

 method of treatment. In this way the preparation of the work was 

 arranged for. 



The bases of the statistics in the Gazetteer were the figures 

 of the census of 1872, but in certain provinces reliance had to be 

 placed on enumerations taken in 1867 to 1871, while the adminis- 

 trative and trade statistics were brought up to 1875 and even as far 

 as 1880. 



In its historical aspect, Mr. Hunter considered that the work was 

 deficient, and the followiug extract from his preface to the 



