Report on the Zoological Survey 



of India for the year 



1916-17. 



INTRODUCTION. 



mHE Zoolojrical Survey of India was inaugurated on July 1st, 

 X 1916. Its formal constitution and the immediate reasons for its 

 recognition as an Imperial department are set forth in the Govern- 

 ment resolution reprinted as Appendix A to this report. It is, 

 however, in all essential features, a product of evolution and there 

 are two facts that it would be unjust to forget :— 



(1) That the Trustees of the Indian Museum put forward 



their proposals for its recognition in ignorance that 

 Government had already under consideration the form- 

 ation of a zoological department, and 



(2) that the development which placed the Zoological Section 



of the Indian Museum in a position to claim recogni- 

 tion was due to the scientific work of a succession of 

 naturalists, who had laboured in official obscurity for 

 nearly a hundred years. 

 There is no duty more difficult to perform, and more seldom 

 performed, by a public body than the graceful abdication of 

 powers it cannot exercise. This the Trustees have done._ There 

 is no stronger evidence of the growth of scientific appreciation in 

 India than the generous self-negation they have maintained in their 

 recent attitude towards zoology. 



The inauguration of the new department must, therefore, be 

 regarded on the one hand as an official recognition of the practical 

 value of pure zoology— a recognition all the more marked in that it 

 was granted in war time— and" on the other as an opportunity for 

 the due development of the work set on foot by the Curators of the 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Superintendents of the Indian 

 Museum. Their work— that of McClelland, Blyth, Anderson, Wood- 

 Mason and Alcock— is briefly described in " The Indian Museum : 

 1814— 19U." I propose here to give a still briefer account of my 

 own stewardship as their successor. 



Z00L0C4ICAL Work in the Indian Museum : 1906—1916. 



In the decade previous to the recognition of the Zoological 

 Survey the most noteworthy advances in tlie zoological work of the 



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