Xll INTRODUCTION 



some square forming the centre of Etawah city, is but one 

 of many examples of his zeal for building. 



" Hume's appointment, in 1867, to be Commissioner of 

 Customs in Upper India gave him charge of the huge physical 

 barrier * which stretched across the country for 2,500 miles 

 from Attock, on the Indus, to the confines of the Madras 

 Presidency. He carried out the first negotiations with 

 Eajputana Chiefs, leading to the abolition of this barrier, 

 and Lord Mayo rewarded him with the Secretaryship to 

 Government in the Home, and afterwards, from 1871, in the 

 Ee venue and Agricultural Departments. Leaving Simla, 

 he returned to the North- West Provinces in October, 1879, 

 as a member of the Board of Ee venue, and retired from the 

 service in 1882. 



" Instead of coming to England he went back to the 

 large house he had purchased at Simla, and set to work to 

 form some organization which would focus the aspirations 

 of advanced Indians throughout the country. 



" Inheriting also his father's versatility, Hume was well 

 known for botanical and ornithological work. During his 

 long career he devoted most of his spare time and much 

 money to collecting material for a great work, ' The Birds of 

 India.' By his own efforts, and the assistance of forty or 

 fifty willing helpers in all parts of India, he succeeded, 

 after a quarter of a century's work, in gathering together in 

 the museum of his Simla house an enormous collection of 

 bird-skins and eggs. The manuscript for the book was 

 almost complete, but it was never to appear. During the 

 winter of 1884 the greater part of the invaluable papers were 

 stolen from his museum during his absence, and, it is 

 supposed, destroyed. He had to give up what had been the 

 ambition of his life. His collection, consisting of 63,000 

 bird-skins, in perfect condition, and 19,000 eggs, he generously 

 presented, in 1885, to the British Museum (Natural History). 

 So important and valuable was the gift, that the late 



* This was a thorn-hedge supplemented by walls and ditches, 

 and strongly patrolled for preventing the introduction into British 

 territory of untaxed salt from native states (see Sir John Strachey's 

 " India," London, 1888). 



