IN SOUTHERN INDIA. 



325 



ments and a few active officials in other branches of the 

 services can realize how hard is the work and how great the 

 exposure of men engaged in following up the geological 

 features of this country. Some energetic sportsmen can do 

 so also, but only to a limited extent, for their exertions are 

 self-imposed, and they can cease from them whenever they feel 

 inclined. The surveyor, on the contrary, cannot, during his 

 field season, cease from his daily round of fatigue and exposure 

 unless he actually goes on the sick list. The rougher the 

 country, the harder the work. It is true this work is often 

 intensely interesting, but it is more often monotonous, and 

 sometimes for days together dreary in the extreme. Then, too, 

 there is the weariness of a solitary life in outlandish places 

 where a white face is sometimes not met with for months 

 together. 



Some residents in Presidency towns, whose greatest physical 

 exertion consists in going to office and sitting under a punkah 

 all day, appear to imagine the jungle life of a geologist an 

 easy one compared with the severe brain- work they have to 

 go through. The man of sedentary avocation, contrasting the 

 monotony and confinement of his daily official routine with 

 the freedom, variety of action, and change of scene that fall to 

 the lot of the geologist, may picture the tent life of the latter 

 as combining the zest and charm of romance and adventure 

 with the delights of travel pursued under agreeable surround- 

 ings. To the journalist pent up in his sanctum, for instance, 

 the life of the geologist may appear to be made up of interest- 

 ing excursions into the country from which, when wearied, he 

 can at will retire to " recuperate " in the nearest town, there, at 

 his leisure, to write up from his notes the results of his latest 

 expedition. It is apparently under the influence of such 

 impressions, that are written some of the criticisms that from 

 time to time appear on the work done and progress made by 

 the geologists of India. Such critics need to be reminded 



