1861.] 
Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. 
167 
level during the night, and observations could then he taken over 
the clouds. The views seen from stations above the level of the 
clouds were at times very startling. The general level of the clouds 
looking like a vast sea, the higher ranges and peaks standing out 
from it like peninsulas and islands, and the waves of clouds surging 
backwards and forwards across the connecting ridges. 
In the outer ranges the lightning and electricity generally was very 
troublesome ; a portable lightning conductor had to be carried for 
the protection of the instrument. Many curious phenomena in con- 
nection with the electricity at high elevations were recorded. The 
effect on a steel-framed umbrella, and other metal articles were more 
especially peculiar on the frozen snow in a thunder-storm, the metal 
making an unpleasant loud crackling noise. 
Captain Montgomerie then read a portion of a memorandum referring 
to the progress of the Kashmir series during the last season, which 
will be printed hereafter in the Society’s Journal. 
Captain Montgomerie pointed out that Messrs. Johnson and 
Beverley had observed from points 20,000 feet above the sea, and that 
a well determined trigonometrical station had been built on a point 
21,480 feet above the sea. 
During the season a large area had been mapped in Little Thibet, 
including at least 300 square miles of glaciers. The glaciers of the 
Mustagh and Karakoram ranges have in fact proved to be even larger 
than those surveyed near the Himalayan range. 
After referring to the late conquest of Gilgit by the Maharaja of 
Kashmir, and the results likely to ensue therefrom, Captain Mont- 
gomerie concluded by saying that if the late war made the Chinese 
officials civil, the gap between Russia and the triangulation of the 
Kashmir series, now little over five degrees of latitude (say 350 miles), 
might be triangulated, and the project of the former Surveyor General, 
Colonel Everest, might be carried out by measuring the arc between 
Cape Comorin and Nova Zembla, an arc of nearly 70 degrees of the 
earth’s surface. At any rate, if the Chinese are now more civil than 
formerly, the Surveyors may hereafter succeed in fixing accurately the 
geographical position of some of the towns of Central Asia. 
The cordial thanks of the meeting were given to Captain Montgo- 
merie for his very interesting observations and also to Sir A. S. Waugh, 
under whose superintendence the valuable survey maps have been 
got up. 
