'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎4] (23/258)

iv
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY.
nerally known, our Rooms would be more frequently resorted to, and Geogra
phy would be greatly benefitted thereby. In the Societies at home, ladies as well
as gentlemen are to be found in numbers amongst the visitors, and I see no rea
son why the same should not be the case amongst ourselves. It would be a poor
compliment certainly to Englishwomen in India to suppose them unlikely to
take an interest in those matters in which ladies of their own rank everywhere else
appear interested, and it surely should do something to improve the tone of con-
versation, the vapidity of which, amongst us, is such frequent subject of complaint
were our wives, sisters or daughters, sharing in the more elegant or intellectual
of our pursuits, to have ideas suggested to them, or topics supplied in the dis
cussion of which all would share. There is no science more eminently popular,
than Geography, or less necessarily dry, and Lectures such as those given at home
in absence of, or in addition to, original papers, intended for our transactions, might
be made eminently interesting and instructive, and if to the more accomplished of
our Members, not altogether new, might to a certain extent be so to all, in a
groat measure to many, and wholly so to not a few. To enhance the attractions
of societies at home, specimens of everything that is new, curious, or rare, bearing
on the topics discussed, are scattered about through the rooms or exhibited on
the table, and the same thing might be done here with equal advantage as at
home. There are probably very few of us who have not every month of the year
things passing through our hands an intelligent audience would desire to examine.
At home so soon as a paper or lecture is read, a discussion ensues, which often
occupies longer time and is of greater interest than the formal prelections that
preceded it. In this every one can take a share, and those who may not have
time or inclination for the preparation of an Essay can bring out the knowledge
they possess, or information and explanations they may desire to obtain, in the
discussion. It is melancholy to think of the contrast our societies in their best
estate present to societies organized at home for the promotion of the objects we
have in view, still more so to review the proceedings, or rather the no proceed
ings, of the past two years, and to reflect that it was only in 184S that we com
muted our Quarterly into Monthly Meetings, to be enabled to overtake the business
with which ourTables were then becoming loaded. The Anniversary address laid
before you in 1850, is now nearly in whole or in fragments to be found in the Wash
ington Observatory Reports, in the Reports of the British Association, in the
Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, in Johnson’s Physical Geography, in Lyell's
Geology and others of the most Standard Works of our time. In former days no
survey or journey used to be undertaken without the matter coming in some shape
or other before us. Our minutes and our transactious bear intimations of this
character from Layard, Burnes, Masson, Wood, Harris, Kvaapff, and Isenbeig,
and I know not how many more besides. From the public prints we observe that
surveys have been lately finished of Bombay harbour and the Malabar Coast, in
the Gulf of Cambay and Cutch, off the shores of Scinde, and along those of Mekran
—but not a single line on these subjects is to be found in our records, or has ever
been before us—nay while supplied by H. M.’s Lords of the Admiralty and by the
Governments of India with every thing pertaining to the Eastern Seas, engraved