NEW BOOKS ON INDIAN ZOOLOU\ 177 



The dates of Lord Canning's orders on the subject are not avail- 

 able to the public, but probably they were issued in the early days 

 of his Viceroyalty, and the starting of the work was delayed by the 

 outburst of the Mutiny. Jerdon served in it with his corps, and was 

 one of those whose courage and endurance left Iudia to future natu- 

 ralists. In 1862 he dedicated the first part of the " Birds of India " 

 to Lord Elgin, and the latter was scarcely cold in his grave, when the 

 volume on " Mammals" was published. The writer evidently hoped 

 to live to publish those on Reptiles and Fishes, but the hope was not 

 fulfilled. It may be that some day some one may publish a memoir 

 of his career. There is a certain note of kindliness and modesty in his 

 writings, which leads the reader to think that he must have been a 

 most charming comrade as much at the mess table as in the 

 jungles he explored so well. Both the "Birds" and the "Mam- 

 mals," too, are books of high literary merit in their way : pure Eng- 

 lish expression, untainted by slang, pedantry, or jealousy. 



Jerdon's work was resumed when the Ray Society published 

 Dr. Giinther's fine monograph on the " Reptiles of India," and was 

 completed when his friend Dr. Day completed his great work on the 

 " Fishes of India." Both of these were works on a far grander scale 

 than had been allowed to Jerdon. The former was soon followed by 

 Dr. Nicholson's (another Madras doctor) " Indian Snakes," and the 

 latter was published almost simultaneously with the then Lieutenant 

 Beavan's " Freshwater Fishes of India." 



Mr. Murray was already at work in Sind and Mr. Oates in Burma 

 before Dr. Day's magnum opus was published. Mr. Hume was edit- 

 ing Stray Feathers, and the Indian naturalist had a chance of a 

 library at last, for the study of the vertebrata. 



But the years of the Crimean and Persian wars, the Mutiny and 

 those that followed them, were not years suitable for the extension 

 of science amongst amateurs. The best men of the Services were 

 fully occupied in the giving and taking of hard knocks, and, when 

 that was over, in picking up the pieces. • 



The great American war turned many vigorous minds exclusively 

 to cotton and stock- jobbing, and the lamp that burned from 54 to 

 64 got but little new oil in that decade. 



The doctors and the Geological Survey men were they who 



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