44 President's Address. [Feb. 



enlarge upon their own contributions to such collections, to depreciate the 

 value of the Asiatic Society's collections. But I speak with a full knowledge 

 of the feeling of true naturalists, and true palaeontologists, when I say that 

 such a storehouse of the accumulated facts of generations, such an accumula- 

 tion of original species, of the absolute labours of the great workers in the 

 Natural Sciences, was simply invaluable. 



Gentlemen, I have dwelt upon this subject, although for many rea- 

 sons I would have greatly preferred to pass it over in silence, because I 

 have been made aware that a most erroneous, and strangely erroneous, idea 

 prevails in certain places, that the Government of the country contri- 

 butes largely towards the Asiatic Society's support. It is needless to tell 

 you, as the members of the Society, that this is not so ; that we do not in 

 fact receive one single pice of the public money as income of the Society, 

 and have not for many years past. We acknowledge with thankfulness 

 the liberality with which on some oocasions, when special wants were re- 

 presented, the Government have aided the Society, but none of these have 

 occurred for years past. We acknowledge that for years when unwilling 

 to adopt other and better means of exhibiting to the people of this 

 country the resources of the land in which they dwelt, the Government main- 

 tained, at a rate of remuneration on which a decent clerk in an office would 

 be supposed to starve, a Curator to take charge of collections to which the 

 Society gave, free of all charges, room for exhibition and study, and also 

 contributed the same small stipend to the support of a man of wide Euro- 

 pean reputation, and who had devoted a lifetime to the Natural History of 

 the country. But contributions to the Society, for the objects of the Society 

 proper, there have been none. 



A sum of 6,000 Rs. per annum is now passed through the hands of 

 the Society as Trustees for the publication and issue of the Bibliotheca In- 

 dica, a noble and invaluable series of the standard vernacular literature of 

 the country ; and one which well repays the limited outlay of 600£ a year. 

 But the grant of this sum gives not one pice to the Society. It gives 

 a very large amount of trouble, anxiety and responsibility, which are vo- 

 luntarily borne by the Philological Committee and Council of the Society, 

 rewarded only by the consciousness that they are doing good. But as I 

 have said, not one fraction of this grant goes to the Society. The accounts 

 are kept most strictly separate, as any one oan satisfy himself by a mere 

 reference to the accounts of the Society. 



I refer also to this for another reason because I find in some Statis- 

 tical returns of Educational and Scientific institutions recently issued by the 



Government of Bengal, the Asiatic Society is set down as possessed of an 

 < endowment' of 190 Rs. per year. Now the facts of this were fully 



explained to the compiler of the tables, and I cannot understand how with 



