PREFATORY NOTE. 
A good many reports, more or less of a preliminary character, have been published in various 
Journals since 1885, relative to the zoological work of the Marine Survey of India, under the title of 
Natural History Notes from H. M. Indian Marine Surveying Steamer ‘In vestigator, and these 
unofficial reports have been supplemented since 1892 by the official series—published under the autho- 
rity of the Director of the Indian Marine—of Illustrations of the Zoology of the Royal Indian 
Marine Survey Ship ‘ Investigator.’ 
As the present small volume contains the first independent Report upon a single group of the 
‘Investigator’ collections, it seems advisable to preface it with a short explanation of the way in which 
the ship became connected with deep-sea exploration and with the Indian Museum. 
In the year 1871 the Council of the Asiatic Society of Bengal appointed Dr. T. Oldham, Dr. F. 
Stoliczka and Mr. J. Wood-Mason to form a sub-committee to report upon the desirability of moving 
the Government of India to undertake deep-sea dredging in Indian waters. 
The sub-committee drew up an elaborate Memoir on the subject, in which definite proposals for 
deep-sea dredging were embodied: this Memoir was submitted to Government, and a copy of it along 
with a copy of the letter with which it was forwarded, is published in the Proceedings of the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal for 1871. 
The Government received the proposals of the Council of the Asiatic Society with cordial approval: 
it gave a small grant in aid of carrying them into immediate effect, and when, in 1874, the present 
Marine Survey Department was established, it sanctioned the appointment, upon the staff of the 
Survey, of a Surgeon-Naturalist—an appointment that had also been strongly advocated by the 
organizer and first head of the Department, Commander Dundas Taylor, I. N. 
But in the early days of the Survey (1874-1881) neither machinery nor vessels capable of deep- 
sea research were available, so that Surgeon (now Lieutenant-Colonel) J. Armstrong, I.M.S., the first 
Surgeon-Naturalist of the Department, had to report that it was “quite impossible to carry into 
“execution the scheme of deep-sea dredging originally proposed by the Council of the Asiatic Society of 
“Bengal,” and had to confine himself to the Zoology of the shallow-water and littoral, although he did 
manage to dredge in water as deep as 100 fathoms. 
However, in 1876, when it had been decided to construct a special vessel for the accommodation of 
the Marine Survey, the Council of the Asiatic Society again addressed the Government of India, and 
asked that provision for deep-sea dredging might not be forgotten in the plans for the new vessel. In 
reply the Government authorized the Council of the Society to confer with the Dockyard authorities 
on the subject of such equipment. 
The Council thereupon appointed a sub-committee, consisting of Dr. John Anderson, then Super- 
intendent of the Indian Museum, and Messrs. J. Wood-Mason (then Deputy Superintendent of the 
Indian Museum), W. T. Blanford, H. F. Blanford, and H. B. Medlicott, for the purpose of advising 
the Dockyard authorities in this direction. 
The result of this and other measures was that when, in 1881, the new vessel Zn vestigator was 
ready for sea, she was properly provided with the means of undertaking deep-sea research as opportu- 
nity should occur. 
