1921.] The Eighth Indian Science Congress. exlv 
and India respectively, first made their investigations and 
then obtained assistance from the East India Company in pub- 
lishing them. Hamilton-Buchanan began by making collec- 
tions and observations wherever he happeved to be stationed 
and thus acquired the experience which enabled Government to 
detail him for special work which facilitated their extension. 
His ‘‘ Fishes of the Ganges’’ appears to have been published 
on his own account. Of his later work done for Government 
none worth the name was published till long after his death, 
while the plates have still to be consulted in original. Jerdon 
and Day also commenced their observations independently, 
afterwards obtaining Government help; Day’s first book was 
published on his own account and Jerdon’s earlier papers in a 
Journal issued by a private society, namely the Madras Lite- 
rary Society. 
Thus was it also with the founders of the Calcutta centre 
of Zoological research, none of whom, with the possible ex- 
ception of Edward Blyth, were professional Zoologists at all, 
in the sense of being dependent on Zoology for their livelihood. 
Their Zoological work, as we have already seen, centred round 
the Asiatic Society of Bengal, a private society which was 
of their fellow members. Yet it is to their efforts, and to those 
of their successors, that the provision by Government of the 
facilities for research that we see here is ultimateley due. 
What has been done once can be done again; and the 
recent work of Col. Stephenson in Lahore, both as an investiga- 
tor and as a. teacher, is in itself an illustration of what a com- 
paratively isolated worker can do if he will under more modern 
conditions. : 
isolation, especially from libraries, must involve 
serious difficulties to any investigator is, however, obvious; and 
in a country of the large size and low average education and 
wealth of India, some degree of isolation is bound to be the lot 
of many, probably for a number of years to come. What, 
then, can we do to minimise these difficulties ¢ $6: 
Different circumstances produce different opportunities, 
research that ma) ; 
permit of the precise type of work towards which we incline 
And above all let us be tho To make a complete 
nomic, done since the last such 
may enter, is rarely easy and will some IME 
to neglect an opportunity because we cannot do this will some- 
