178 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 1890. 



chiefly kept it alight when Blyth and Jerdon were gone. The cul- 

 ture of the early competition- wallahs was chiefly literary, and that of 

 their military contemporaries was, when not literary, mostly mathe- 

 matical or artistic. Nothing could better show the state of things 

 than the fact that Jerdon's volume on Mammals was only reprinted 

 (not edited) in 1874, the "Birds," I believe, not until 1880 or 

 thereabouts. 



The latter was so scarce a book that each of three volumes that I 

 possess is to me the relic of a separate friend that got it for me — ■ 

 one dead, one gone, and one serving afar off. 



But the ebb was over, and the flood had set in again ; those who 

 were really capable of becoming centres of inquiry were every 

 day finding more and more who would contribute chance facts or 

 specimens. The Bombay Gazetteer office was routing out every- 

 body who knew anything about anything, and lent a great impulse to 

 every kind of inquiry by its studious and honourable acknowledg- 

 ment of every contribution of fact. 



The Indian Antiquary was waking up other branches of inves- 

 tigation as long ago as 1872, and it could not do so without the 

 echo reaching Natural History. 



For, as any one familiar with Anglo-Indian culture cannot help 

 remarking, in every science the leading men must necessarily be 

 those who devote themselves chiefly to it ; but the second rank, the 

 observers and collectors of specimens, are generally men of somewhat 

 varied tastes. 



Life in the Mof ussil is generally deadly dull. Shikar is not every- 

 where. A chance of making love is a rare luxury and the " flowing 

 bowl " apt to be a snare. 



Music, except for the favoured few who can play the fiddle, is not 

 portable. (I decline to count the banjo.) So the man who has the 

 best chance of a tolerable existence is he who can get enjoyment 

 equally out of a bird, a fish, a rat, a stone in its natural state, or the 

 same in that of some crumbling temple, a scrubby bush (any fool 

 can appreciate a big tree), or, in short, Omnis res scibilis. This sort 

 of versatility does not make scientific masters, but it does make men 

 who can bear a hand, and some men possessed of it have been very 

 valuable to more than one science. I need only quote such names as 



