These proposals were sanctioned on the 11th September 1868. Towards the close of 1868 Mr. (now Sir) J. B. Peile took the place of Sir A. Grant on the Committee and Colonel Francis was added to the list of the members. Adhering as far as possible to the arrangement followed in the Gazetteer of the Central Provinces, which had met with the approval of the Secretary of State, Mr. Crowe drew out the following list of subjects which was forwarded to all Collectors Sub-Collectors and Survey Superintendents:

In 1869 the draft articles prepared by Mr. Crowe were submitted to Mr. (now Sir) W. W. Hunter of the Bengal Civil Service who expressed his satisfaction at the progress made. The Committee adopted certain suggestions made by Sir W. Hunter for the arrangement of the work and for obtaining fuller district figures from the Marine, Irrigation, Cotton, and Survey Offices. In March 1870 a further extension of one year was accorded. The Bombay Government directed that each Collector should choose one of his Assistants to correspond with the Editor and obtain for him all possible information from local records. All Heads of Offices were also desired to exert themselves zealously in aiding the prosecution of the work. In 1871 Mr. Crowe’s draft article on the Dhárwár District was sent to Mr. Hunter for opinion who in addition to detailed criticism on various points made the following general remarks:

“My own conception of the work is that, in return for a couple of days’ reading, the Account should give a new Collector a comprehensive, and, at the same time, a distinct idea of the district which he has been sent to administer. Mere reading can never supersede practical experience in the district administration. But a succinct and well conceived district account is capable of antedating the acquisition of such personal experience by many months and of both facilitating and systematising a Collector’s personal enquiries. The Compiler does not seem to have caught the points on which a Collector would naturally consult the Account. In order that the Editor should understand these points it is necessary that he should have had practical acquaintance with district administration and that he should himself have experienced the difficulties which beset an officer on his taking charge of a district or sub-division. The individual points will differ according to the character of the country. For example in deltaic districts the important question is the control of rivers; in dry districts it is the subject of water-supply. But in all cases a District Account besides dealing with the local specialties should furnish an historical narration of its revenue and expenditure since it passed under the British rule, of the sums which we have taken from it in taxes, and of the amount which we have returned to it in the protection of property and person and the other charges of civil government.”

Sir William Hunter laid much stress on the necessity of stating the authority on the strength of which any statement is made and of the propriety of avoiding anything like libels on persons or classes. In 1871 Sir W. Hunter was appointed Director General of Statistics to the Government of India. In this capacity he was to be a central guiding authority whose duty it was to see that each of the Provincial Gazetteers contained the materials requisite for the comparative statistics of the Empire. As some of the Bombay District Accounts were incomplete and as it was thought advisable to embody in the District Accounts the results of the general Census of 1872, it was decided, in October 1871, that pending the completion of the census the Gazetteer work should be suspended and that when the results of the census were compiled and classified a special officer should be appointed for a period of six months to revise and complete the drafts. In October 1871, pending the compilation of the census returns, Mr. Crowe was appointed Assistant Collector at Sholápur and the Gazetteer records were left in a room in the Poona Collector’s Office. In September 1872 the whole of the Gazetteer records, including thirty-one articles on British Districts and Native States, were stolen by two youths who had been serving in the Collector’s Office as peons. These youths finding the Gazetteer office room unoccupied stole the papers piece by piece for the sake of the trifling amount they fetched as waste paper. Search resulted in the recovery in an imperfect state of seven of the thirty-one drafts. The youths were convicted and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment in the Poona Reformatory.

In 1873 Mr. Francis Chapman then Chief Secretary to Government took the preparation of the Gazetteer under his personal control. And in June 1873 Mr. James M. Campbell, C.S., was appointed Compiler. An important change introduced by Mr. Chapman was to separate from the preparation of the series of District Manuals certain general subjects and to arrange for the preparation of accounts of those general subjects by specially qualified contributors. The subjects so set apart and allotted were:

No.General Contributors, 1873.
Subject.Contributor.
1EthnologyDr. J. Wilson.
2MeteorologyMr. C. Chambers, F.R.S.
3GeologyMr. W. Blandford.
4BotanyDr. W. Gray.
5ArchæologyDr. J. Burgess.
6Manufactures and IndustryMr. G. W. Terry.
7Trade and CommerceMr. J. Gordon.

These arrangements resulted in the preparation of the following papers each of which on receipt was printed in pamphlet form:

I. Ethnology; II. Meteorology; III. Geology; and IV. Botany.