RECORDS 
OF THE 
GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 
Part 1.] 
1S78. 
[February, 
Annual Report of the G-eological Survey of India, and of the Geological 
Museum, Calcutta, foe the year 1877. 
New ground .—The field-work of the Geological Survey of India is of two 
kinds: the preliminary exploration of ground regarding wliicli our knowledge is 
citlier a blank or exceedingly vague, and tlio more detailed study of rocks 
the general features of which have been laid down. The latter is essentially the 
more difficult task, and, within certain limits, the more interesting to the geo¬ 
logist, as requii’ing the more exact application of the guiding prineijiles of his 
science, and as allording the better opportunity of testing and defining those 
principles themselve.s. The attractions of the former, both to the worker and the 
looker-on, are its rapidity and the more easy attainment of the sensation of 
adding something to our store of knowledge. In the progress of the Survey, 
the proportions of these two kinds of work undergo a constant change; but wo 
are still far from the state of having no new ground to explore. During the 
past sca.son two .such blanks have been ajiproximatoly filled in. 
I am glad to announce that the principal of the.so reclaimed territories is in 
the higher Himalajm. Hitherto our work in this most interesting region has 
been in a manner occasional. The circumstance of my connection with the 
College at Roorkee for some years placed mo wdthin easy roach of the lower 
Himalaya, and the results of four seasons’ work were published in 18G4 (Memoirs, 
G. S. I., vol. III). Dr. Stoliczka’.s zeal for great undertakings led him early 
to urge the exploration of Western Tibet. The result of his obsei'vations 
in that difficult region during the summers of 1864 and 1865 were published 
in vol. V of our Memoirs, and were supplemented by his notes on his last fatal 
journey to Kashgar in 1873 (Records, G. S. I., vol. VII). The urgent demand 
for coal in connexion with the Northera Bengal Railway led to Mr. Mallet’s 
deputation in 1873 to examine the Damiida rocks discovered in 1849 by Dr. 
Hooker at the base of the Sikkim Himalaya. Mr. Mallet’s observations on this 
fringe of the mountain region were published in vol. XI of the Memoirs. The 
foregoing accounts, together with the observations by Captain R. Strachey, R.E., 
in Kumaun and Central Tibet, and published with a map in the Quarterly Journal 
A 
