392 



BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY'S 

 MAMMAL SURVEY OF INDIA. 

 Report by R. C. Wroughton, f.z.s. 



Collection 



No. 1, 



Locality East Khandesh. 



Date March-May 1911. 



Collected by ... ... ... Mr. C. A. Crump. 



As this is the first report on the results of the Mammal Survey, 

 a few words as to the reasons for, and objects of, the Survey will 

 not be out of place. 



In 1758, LinnaBus published the tenth Edition of his " Systema 

 Naturae," which, later, was formally accepted by common consent 

 as the Foundation Stone of Systematic Zoology. A great num- 

 ber, if not the larger proportion, of the animals included in that 

 work had never been seen by its author, who described them from 

 the writings of other naturalists, only accepting however such as 

 had been figured. 



The Linneean " Genera" were almost as wide as what are now 

 called " Families." For instance, Simia embraced all the monkeys 

 from the African Chimpanzee to the American Marmoset, while 

 the genus Mits included such widely different forms as the Guinea 

 Pig, the Marmot, and the Flying Squirrel, as well as the Rats, 



In proportion as communications improved and travelling be- 

 came easier, more specimens reached European Museums, and 

 zoologists came more and more to see the necessity for multiply- 

 ing species, yet nevertheless, under the influence of the accepted 

 theory of created species, it was not held to be an improbable 

 thing that a " species " should co-exist in most widely separated 

 parts of the world. 



With the publication of Darwin's Theory of Evolution it was 

 brought home to systematists, that further multiplication of 

 genera and species was necessary. 



Turning now specially to Indian Systemic Mammalogy, we find 

 that during the middle third of the nineteenth century, quite a 

 number of men were working at the subject on the spot. Horsfield 



