xlviii A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF 
not seen and which was not therefore among the correspondence handed by Buchanan 
tothe Court when he arrived in England, appears to have also reached the Court of 
Directors and to have led to enquiries on their part from the authority who had so 
depreciated Buchanan’s work to Lord Hastings. The result was a chante of the attitude 
of the Court towards Buchanan and his collections which, as Buchanan explains in a 
letter of February 1817, they treated with ‘arrogance and contempt, an attitude which 
they for a time unfortunately adopted towards his journals and reports as weil. 
The Court in 1820 so far unbent as to permit Buchanan to take away his botanical 
specimens and arrange them “for the Company's collection and for publication in such 
journals as may accept them." About the same time, as we have seen, the Court ailowed 
Colebrooke to extract and edit certain portions of Buchanan's reports, The interesting 
point is that when Buchanan (now Hamilton) obtained his botanical collections, the 
. corresponding drawings had not reached England, so that the order of the Government 
of Bengal, dated July 17th, 1816, was not yet fulfilled in June 1821. 
Why the order was not carried out the writer cannot ascertain. There is no record 
that the drawings were transmitted to Government by the Superintendents of this 
Garden between 1816 and 1821. At the same time it is difficult to understand how 
orders so definite as those quoted above could have remained unfulfilled without reminders 
from the Government at Caleutta, or the Court of Directors, or both, 
The next reference to the Buchanan drawings that the writer is able to find is the 
indignant one by M'Clelland of 1836. From the somewhat vigorous manner in which 
M'Clelland writes, we gather that M’Clelland believed the drawings which Wallich, 
Superintendent of this Garden, had placed at his disposel in 1833 were the original 
zoological drawings of which Buchanan had been deprived in 1815. Nor is there anything 
in Day's careful notice? to indicate that he had a different belief. As we see, however, 
from the letter of 25th February 1815 the drawings made over to M'Clelland included not 
only the drawings of which Buchanan had been deprived in 1815, but the drawings that 
were made at the menagerie, and if the orders of July 17th, 1816, was really carried out, 
the drawings, at any rate of the 1807-14 survey period, could only be copies, If there be 
any originals, these originals should belong only to the menagerie collections of 1803-05. 
U Тһе much discussed collection is in the Library of the Asiatic Society at Caleutta at 
this moment. It consists of zoological drawings only, in four volumes, of which three are 
respectably and one, marked vol, IV , is shabbily bound. The first contains mammals for 
the most part, and they appear to the writer to be chiefly copies of other drawings made 
at Barrackpore and sent to the India House. The second and third are mainly devoted 
to birds, but though often endorsed by Buchanan they are not drawings of his own 
supervising but drawings by a Mr. Gibbons; as tlie endorsements show, they are, moreover, 
in many cases, only copies? Тһе fourth volume is chiefly devoted to fishes, and is the 
Some of these endorsements may be quoted :— 
_ Drawings delivered at the India House, 1806. Drawings left at India House, 1806. Drawings of Mr. Gibbons left 
2 with Dr. Fleming. Among the drawings of Mr. Gibbons left with Mr. Fleming, sent home, 1808. Drawings by Mr. Gibbons 
_ leit at India House, 1809. Done after my return to Bengal. Drawings made after my return to Bengal. They are 
arranged without much order whether as to systematic or chronological sequence. 
