GEOGRAPHICAL WORK OF THE INDIA OFFICE. 377 



the Government expense. An admirable introduction was prefixed, 

 giving an account of Tibetan geography and history, and the 

 journals were annotated throughout by Mr. Markham. 



On the retirement of Mr. Markham the geographical work was 

 transferred to the Statistics and Commerce Department under 

 Mr. H. Waterfield. For a time the correspondence and papers on 

 geographical subjects were filed separately, under the special orders 

 of the Secretary of State in Council, but on the 1st January 1879, 

 other arrangements were made and the geographical and kindred 

 papers were intermingled with those on all the other subjects, such 

 as commerce, statistics, sanitation, &c, assigned to the new depart- 

 ment. The subsequent history of the geographical work of the 

 India Office has thus been merged with that of other subjects, and 

 becomes a matter of great difficulty to trace, while the loss of 

 Mr. Markham undoubtedly put an end to a good deal of projected 

 work which the geographical staff would have helped to bring 

 to completion. In 1879, Mr. Waterfield was created Financial 

 Secretary, and Mr. W. G. Pedder, of the Bombay Civil Service, was 

 appointed to the secretaryship of the Revenue Department, with 

 which the old Statistics and Commerce Department, carrying with it 

 the geographical business of the Office, was amalgamated. The geo- 

 graphical work by a natural process of gravitation thus came under 

 the control of the Revenue Department with which it undoubtedly 

 has an increasing affinity. For now that the principal triangulation, 

 and the first rough topographical survey of India are practically com- 

 plete, such fresh surveys as are required (apart from the trans-frontier 

 operations) are mainly for revenue purposes, a need which the gradual 

 extension of cultivation tends still further to enhance. The following 

 year saw the transfer of the author to the Home Office in the capacity 

 of Assistant Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Home 

 Affairs, and the special care of Indian geographical matters practically 

 devolved upon Mr. Trelawney Saunders until 1885, when the return 

 of the present writer to the India Office after five years' service in the 

 Home Office led to further departmental changes, Mr. Saunders 

 retiring on a pension. Mr. Saunders had done much useful service 

 in the cause of geography, both before and after his entry into 

 the India Office. Endowed with strong geographical instincts and 

 tastes he was appointed in 1854 curator to the Royal Geographical 

 Society, and also acted for a time as Librarian to that body. In 

 1857 he joined Mr. Stanford's establishment (originally his own 

 house), and here he edited the useful series of school maps issued 



