xliv A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
rather warmly, has gone carefully into the subject and explains that the drawings 
were kept in India 
“to illustrate Dr. Buchanan’s statistical reports оп several of the districts and it was proposed to 
take copies of the originals which were subsequently to be transmitted to England.” | 
This, thongh given as one reason in the Governor-General’s note, was not the 
only reason for retaining the drawings. It so happens, too, that it was the reason 
given by his Lordship which was least sustainable. Тһе drawings required to Z//us- 
trate the statistical reports were all already carefully arranged by Bucbanan in their 
proper places and all duly referred to in the body of his reports. As we know, they 
accompanied from the first, and still accompany, his reports and journal. The natural 
history drawings which were the subject of Lord Hastings’ note were meant by 
Buchanan to illustrate the descriptions that he hoped to base, after his retirement, on : 
his notes and specimens. They had no immediate reference to, or bearing upon, his 
reports or his journal as such. 
Beveridge, in his account of the Buchanan Records in the Caleutta Review for 
June 1894, thinks that if the Marquis of Hastings’ action was dictated by a desire 
to keep the drawings in India and for the benefit of the Botanic Garden, he was 
right in preventing their removal to England, We know, however, that the official 
order was to transmit them to the Secretariat and that this order was complied with, 
The question of benefiting this Garden, or any other publie institution in India, is 
not touched upon in the actual correspondence. 
The author of the article оп Buchanan's life іп the Scottish Nation, more correct 
in this, as he is in most matters, than the majority of those who have dealt with the 
subject, has alone divined, or had access to, the ostensible official reason; the depri- 
vation is said by him to have been ‘ probably on account of his (Buchanan) 
having been otácially employed to prepare them’ (the drawings). 
This was, as we have seen, the reason given to Buchanan himself, But it 
was not the only reason, and to settle once for all the vague surmises to which the 
incident has given origin to it is only fair both to the memory of the Marquis of 
Hastings and of Dr. Buchanan to state, in the Marquis of Hastings’ own words, why 
he decided to deprive Buchanan of these drawings. His Excellency’s note, dated 5th 
January 1815, is as follows:— 
“ Ву a letter from Dr. Buchanan received here it appears that he proposes to carry to Europe 
. all the drawings of animals and plants collected by him during the tour which he was employed 
to make in this country. Dr. Buchanan states that it is his object to request the Court of Directors 
to accept this collection as a present from him. Now, I apprehend that these drawings are already 
the property of the Hon’ble Court, the service for which Dr. Buchanan was employed and paid 
examined by him are so vague and indistinct as to be absolutely useless without the aid of the 
drawings to which they refer. I therefore beg leave to suggest the’ propri 
еее ле... MÀ 
қы EET 
* Proc. As. Soc. Beng. for 1871, p. 197, 
