IINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. XCV 



were presented to tlie principal Museums in Europe. The chief 

 results of the labours thus undertaken are exhibited in the Palseon- 

 tological Galleries of the British Museum, to which may well be 

 applied, with respect to Ealconer, the words inscribed to the me- 

 mory of Wren in St. Paul's Cathedral. Under the patronage of 

 the Grovernment and of the India House an illustrated work was 

 also commenced, entitled "Eauna Antiqua Sivalensis," of which the 

 plates of nine parts were brought out between 1844 and 1847. 

 It is deeply to be deplored that the letterpress descriptive of these 

 beautiful figures, for the most part exquisitely drawn by Pord 

 under the continual and minute superintendence of Dr. Falconer, 

 should never have been completed; but before this could be 

 accomplished the expiration of his leave, in 1847, compelled the 

 return of the author to India, and thus interrupted the progress 

 of a work which, had it been completed according to the original 

 design, would have been one of the most splendid contributions 

 to palseontological science ever produced. 



His botanical collections were less fortunate. Having partially 

 sufiered from damp on the voyage to England, they were deposited 

 in the cellars of the India House during his second absence in 

 India, where the specimens underwent a ruinous process of decay. 

 A few only were rescued from absolute destruction when Dr. J. 

 D.Hooker succeeded, in 1857, in an application to the authorities 

 at the India House for the removal of these and other botanical 

 collections to Kew. 



During his brief residence at this time in England, Dr. Ealconer 

 contributed to the Eoyal A siatic Society a " Discourse on the 

 Eossil Eauna of the Sewalik Hills" (Journ. E. A. Soc. 1844), to 

 the Zoological Society a description of the " Grigantic Eossil Tor- 

 toise, Golossochelys Atlas^'' discovered by himself and Capt. Cautley 

 (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1844, p. 85), and to the Greological Society Me* 

 moirs " On Fossil Remains of Anoplotherium and Grirafie, from 

 the Sewalik HiUs " (Proc. Geol. Soc. 1844, vol. iv. p. 235), and 

 on " Dinotherium, Griraffe, and other Mammalia from the Grulf of 

 Cambay " (Quart. Journ. Greol. Soc. 1845, vol. i. p. 356) ; to the 

 Linnean Society he communicated papers on the Asclepiad affi- 

 nities of Gryptolepis, on AiicMandia Costus, the Cashmere plant 

 which yields the Kostos of the ancients, then for the first time 

 determined — and on Nartliex Asafcetida, being the first determi- 

 nation also of the plant, long contested among botanists, which 

 yields the asafcetida of commerce. He had found it growing wild 

 in the valley of the Astore, one of the affluents of the Indus. To 



