530 



NATURE 



[SepteiMber 27, 1900 



^assistance of highly- placed Government officials. All these 

 advantages Dr. Anderson combined in an unusual degree, 

 and although it is to be hoped that the work he left 

 unfinished will not be brought to an end by his death, 

 there can be no question that the want of his guiding 

 hand in the enterprise will be severely felt. 



Dr. Anderson's scientific work consisted of two dis- 

 tinct parts. From 1865 to 1886 he was at the head of the 

 Jndian Museum, Calcutta, and chiefly engaged in the 

 collection, arrangement and study of Indian and Burmese 

 Vertebrata. After his retirement from India, in 1886, 

 the subject which occupied him principally, and of late 

 years exclusively, was, as already mentioned, the study 

 of the fauna inhabiting Egypt and the Nile valley. 



He was the son of Thomas Anderson, a banker of 

 Edinburgh, and was born on October 4, 1833. His elder 

 brother. Dr. T. Anderson, was in the medical service of 

 the East India Company, became well known as a 

 botanist, and was for some years superintendent of the 

 feotanical Gardens, near Calcutta. After passing through 

 ■the medical course in the University of Edinburgh, John 

 ^nderson received a gold medal and the degree of Doctor 

 of Medicine in 1861. For a couple of years he held the 

 Professorship of Natural Science at the Free Church 

 College, Edinburgh, and he went to Calcutta in 1864. 

 ; His arrival in Calcutta was at a fortunate time. The 

 JAsiatic Society of Bengal had gradually come into the 



f')ossession of a large collection, not only of the archaso- 

 ogical remains, manuscripts, coins and similar objects, 

 for the study of which the Society was originally estab- 

 lished, but also of zoological and geological specimens 

 in large numbers. In the course of the preceding quarter 

 ■of a century the collections had increased, chiefly through 

 the work of Edward Blyth, the curator, until the Society's 

 premises were crowded, and the Society's funds no longer 

 sufficed for the proper preservation and exhibition of the 

 specimens collected. After long negotiations, interrupted 

 "by the disturbances of 1857, arrangements were com- 

 pleted in 1864 by which the archsological and zoological 

 collections of the Society (the geological specimens had 

 been previously transferred) were taken over by the 

 Government of India, who undertook to build a new 

 museum in Calcutta, of which the Society's collections 

 '■would form the nucleus. The trustees appointed by the 

 Government to manage the new museum asked the 

 Secretary of State for India to select a curator, and 

 Dr. J. Anderson was nominated for the post early in 

 1865. His status was changed, a i&'H years later, to that 

 of superintendent of the museum, and in addition to his 

 museum work he became Professor of Comparative 

 Anatomy at the Medical College, Calcutta. He held 

 both offices until his retirement from India in 1886. 

 - The time at which Dr. Anderson arrived in India was 

 fortunate in another respect. It coincided with a great 

 impulse given to Indian zoology by the publication of 

 Jerdan's "Birds of India," the last vplume of which 

 appeared in 1864, and with the presence in Calcutta 

 of a larger number of men interested in the study of 

 the fauna than were assembled there at any time before 

 or since. Amongst these men were Jerdan himself, 

 Ferdinand Stoliczka, Francis Day, and Valentine Ball, 

 all of whom have now passed away. Probably at no 

 time has so much progress been made in the study of 

 Indian Vertebrata as in the years 1864-74, and in this 

 work Dr. Anderson took an important part. 



The new Indian Museum, which now towers over the 

 other buildings of Chowringhee, was not ready for occu- 

 pation till 1875, but meantime Dr. Anderson had been 

 busily engaged in adding to the zoological collections 

 and in getting them into order. One of his first tasks 

 was the bringing together of an ethnological series, for 

 which the conditions of Calcutta are favourable. Amongst 

 other important additions made by him was that of a 

 fine series of human skulls representing various Indian 



NO. 1613, VOL. 62] 



races. Another very valuable museum series brought 

 together by him consisted of a good collection of Indian 

 Chelonia ; skeletons, carapaces and stuffed specimens. 



The work in Calcutta was interrupted by two important 

 expeditions to Upper Burma and Yunnan, to both of 

 which Dr. Anderson was attached as naturalist and 

 medical officer. Both expeditions were designed to pass 

 through China to Canton or Shanghai, but in neither 

 case was it found practicable to carry out the original 

 plan. The first expedition, commanded by Colonel E. B. 

 Sladen, left Calcutta at the end of 1867, proceeded as 

 far as Momein in Yunnan, and returned to India in 

 November 1868 ; the second, under the command of 

 Colonel Horace Browne, left in January 1875, but was 

 treacherously attacked by the Chinese before it had pro- 

 ceeded more than three marches beyond the Burmese 

 frontier, and compelled to return, Mr. Margery, of the 

 Chinese Consular Service, who had been despatched to 

 accompany the mission, and who had preceded it by a 

 march, being murdered with several of his followers. The 

 difficulties experienced by both missions from the time they 

 crossed the frontier between Burma and China, and the 

 opposition of the inhabitants of the country, seriouslyinter- 

 fered with zoological observations, and the collection 

 of specimens was generally impossible ; but still 

 some important additions were made to the previous 

 knowledge of the fauna. A full account of the journey 

 was given in Dr. Anderson's reports and in a work by 

 him, entitled " Mandalay to Momein," published in 1876. 

 The detailed observations on zoology, supplemented 

 by important notes on some Indian and Burmese 

 mammals and chelonians, were published in 1878-9, 

 under the title of "Anatomical and Zoological 

 Researches, comprising an Account of the Zoological 

 Results of the two Expeditions to Western Yunnan in 

 1868 and 1875, 3.nd a Monograph of the two Cetacean 

 Genera, Platanista and Orcella." The work appeared 

 in two quarto volumes, one consisting of plates. Dr. 

 Anderson was the first who succeeded in obtaining 

 specimens of the porpoise {Orcella) inhabiting the Irra- 

 waddi, and the examination of this previously undescribed 

 form led him to make a thoroug:h anatomical investigation 

 of an allied species occurring in the Bay of Bengal and 

 in the estuaries of rivers flowing into the bay, and also 

 of the remarkable cetacean, Platanista^ inhabiting the 

 Ganges, Brahmaputra and Indus. 



The only other important collecting expedition under- 

 taken by Dr. Anderson during his tenure of the super- 

 intendentship of the Indian Museum was to Tenasserim 

 and the Mergui Archipelago in 1881-2. This journey was 

 chiefly, though by no means exclusively, undertaken for 

 the collection of marine animals, and the descriptions of 

 the results, to which several naturalists contributed, were 

 published first in \h& Journal of the Linnean Society, and 

 subsequently as a separate reprint in two volumes, under 

 the title of " Contributions to the Fauna of Mergui and its 

 Archipelago." This appeared in 1889. Dr. Anderson's 

 share was the description of the Vertebrata and an account 

 of the Selungs — a curious tribe inhabiting some of the 

 islands ; but in connection with his visit to Mergui, and 

 as part of a general description of the fauna which he 

 had at first proposed to publish, he prepared an account 

 of the history of Tenasserim, formerly belonging to Siam. 

 This historical resume, which deals especially with 

 British commercial and political intercourse with 

 Siamese and Burmese ports, was compiled mainly from 

 the manuscript records of the East India Company, 

 preserved in the library of the India Office, and was 

 published in 1889 in a separate volume, entitled " English 

 Intercourse with Siam." The book forms a well-written 

 and interesting chapter of the history of British progress 

 in Southern Asia. 



Besides the works already mentioned and many 

 papers, descriptive of mammalia and reptiles, which 



