hill districts on the north with what have been described as products of the "contact metamorphism" with the Mongoloid tribes of Central Asia. Thus, in spite of the inevitable blurring of boundary lines, the political divisions treated together in this volume, form a fairly clean-cut geographical unit.
Sir James Douie, in this work, is obviously living over again the happy thirty-five years which he devoted to the service of North- West India: his accounts of the physiography, the flora and fauna, the people and the administration are essentially the personal recollections of one who has first studied the details as a District Officer and has afterwards corrected his perspective, stage by stage, from the successively higher view-point of a Commissioner, the Chief Secretary, Financial Commissioner, and finally as Officiating Lieut.-Governor. No one could more appropriately undertake the task of an accurate and well-proportioned thumb-nail sketch of North-West India and, what is equally important to the earnest reader, no author could more obviously delight in his subject.
Alderley Edge,
- March 9th, 1916.
