1879.] 
President's Address. 
37 
All therefore tends so far to support the view taken by the officers in the 
Great Trigonometrical Survey, and to shew that the Sanpo and Dihong are 
identical. At the same time the question cannot be considered settled 
until the two rivers are actually traced into connection with each other. 
We may hope for large additions to our knowledge of Afghanistan 
from the present expedition. I regret to say that hitherto the endeavour 
to take advantage of the presence of a British army in Afghanistan for 
purposes of scientific enquiry has been limited to the despatch of surveying 
parties, but I hope this will not continue to be the case, and that so favour¬ 
able an opportunity for extending our knowledge of the Archseology of a 
most interesting region, and for examining the Ethnology, Geology, Zoolo¬ 
gy and Botany of Afghanistan, will not again be allowed to pass away with¬ 
out being used. I am indebted to General Walker for the information that 
Major Tanner of the Survey Department has discovered, near Jellalabad, 
some relics of the old Kafir (pre-Muhammadan) rulers, and more parti¬ 
cularly has found a subterranean palace, which has been already partially 
excavated. He has also made enquiries about those mysterious people, 
the inhabitants of Kafiristan, and finds that there are at least ten dialects 
of the Kafir language : of these dialects which, as might be supposed, are 
Aryan, he is making a glossary. It is greatly to be hoped that Major 
Tanner will succeed in visiting Kafiristan, a region which has for so long 
been an object of interest and enquiry, and which was strangely neglected 
when formerly access was possible. It is not probable that there will be 
much difficulty in going thither, as the inhabitants are believed to be 
friendly, and tried to induce English officers to visit them during the 
former occupation of Cahul. 
On some of the other land frontiers of India good progress is being 
made in the work of surveying. In Burma and Assam, where the difficul¬ 
ties caused by dense forest, one of the worst enemies a surveyor can meet, 
are at their maximum, there is a steady advance in the triangulation. 
The regular work of the Trigonometrical Survey has but little general 
interest, although it is laying the ground-work for every variety of know¬ 
ledge, and the details of topography are even less exciting, hut the Survey 
is certainly to be congratulated on the production of maps such as those of 
Guzerat. Scarcely any one in the country has so good opportunities of 
testing the accuracy of map-drawing as have the officers of the Geological 
Survey, and the maps of Kattywar on the scale of an inch to the mile are 
described as excellent. 
But, besides exploration and mapping, there are several branches of 
scientific enquiry on which the officers of the Great Trigonometrical Survey 
are engaged. One of these,—a question of far greater practical importance 
that it appears at first sight,—is the determination of the exact differences 
