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ON AMMONITES ROBUSTUS (R. STRACHEY, MS.), H. F. BLANFORD, 
FROM THE HIMALAYAS. 
By G. C. Cricx, F.G.S., 
Of the British Museum (Natural History). 
Read 9th January, 1903. 
In 1851 Captain (now Sir) Richard Strachey communicated to the 
Geological Society of London a paper ‘‘ On the Geology of Part of the 
Himalaya Mountains and Tibet,” based upon the observations which 
he made during the years 1848-49. The Paleozoic and Secondary 
fossils therein mentioned were described in 1865, the former by 
J. W. Salter and the latter by H. F. Blanford, in a joint work of 
which the title-page reads as follows: ‘‘ Paleontology of Niti in the 
Northern Himalaya: being descriptions and figures of the Paleozoic 
and Secondary Fossils collected by Colonel Richard Strachey, R.K. 
Descriptions by J. W. Salter, F.G.S., A.L.S8., and H. F. Blanford, 
A.R.S.M., F.G.S. Reprinted with slight corrections for private 
circulation from Colonel R. Strachey’s forthcoming work’ on the 
physical geography of the Northern Himalaya. Calcutta: O. T. Cutter, 
Military Orphan Press. March, mpcccrxv.”’ 
‘The [Strachey] collection,” says Salter (p. 2), ‘was brought 
home numbered and catalogued, but still required months of patient 
work in breaking up and chiselling out the specimens. When finally 
arranged upon tablets, with localities, he [ Colonel Strachey | placed them 
all in the colonial collections of the Museum of Practical Geology, and 
left me the more pleasant task of comparing and describing them.” 
Without doubt, Strachey attached to the fossils the names which 
Salter and Blanford subsequently adopted in their descriptions. In 
a footnote on p. 80 Salter states that ‘‘all the figured specimens of 
Colonel Strachey’s collection have been liberally presented by that 
gentleman to the Museum of Practical Geology, London.” The 
Strachey Collection is now, however, in the British Museum, being one 
of the collections of foreign fossils transferred to this Museum from 
the Museum of Practical Geology in 1880. 
Among the species described and figured by Blanford in the work 
above mentioned was Ammonites robustus, R. Strachey MS. (p. 85, 
pl. xvi, figs. la-c). ‘Lhe two specimens which he figured and 
1 This work was never published. 
