242 PROCEEDINGS OF THE MALACOLOGICAL SOCIEir. 



Afghanistan." He was with the Aniiy of the Indus that advanced 

 into that country in 1839, and the collection was made between 

 Dadur in Sind, to Girishk on the Helmund, crossing the Bolan Pass, 



This is a country fresh in our memories ; another army has gone 

 into it and returned, but we know very little more of its land 

 mollusca. Officers of the Army, interested in any branch of Natural 

 History, are as rare in these days as they were in Hutton's time. I 

 can only name one man, Mr. M. T. Ogle, an old Survey Assistant of 

 my own, who brought back any shells from Afghanistan. Except 

 when on actual service in face of an active enemy, no men have 

 hotter opportunities for research than officers of H.M. Army. Days, 

 weeks, even months, are spent by many in the most favourable places 

 in the world, where Nature is lavish of her gifts, where the monotony 

 and solitude of the life are to some temperaments almost unbearable ; 

 in such a quarter, if they only possessed an interest in some branch 

 of science, their lives would at once be full of pleasure, and the 

 sameness of the daily military duty would not be felt. It is no 

 excuse to say there is no time, or that duties would be neglected ; 

 the lives of such men as Sir Henry Rawlinson (and many others 

 can be recalled) show what can be, and has been, accomplished by 

 our race in every part of the world, even when fully employed 

 departmentally. 



Benson, to whom Hutton sent most of his shells, and with whom 

 he was in constant communication, began work about the year 1834. 

 In August of that year he exhibited, at a meeting of the Zoological 

 Society of London, a collection of land and fresh-water shells formed 

 in the Gangetic Provinces of India. It comprised forty species, which 

 he presented to the Society, and it would be interesting to know 

 what eventually became of them. His paper was an important 

 communication, and followed a previous one in 1832 to the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal, on a collection presented to that Society from the 

 same part of India. The animal of a Macrochlamys was described 

 for the first time, and even reached this country alive. 



From this period Benson was an enthusiastic worker, and it may 

 be truly said that he laid the foundation for the study of Indian 

 terrestrial and fluviatile mollusca on a thoroughly scientific basis. 

 More important too, for his time, he was imbued with that proper 

 appreciation of geographical distribution, without which so much of 

 the value of malacology as a science is lost. His descriptions are 

 most accurate, and his remarks and conclusions often of great interest. 

 By his excellent example he gathered about him a number of men in 

 the service of the Hon. East India Company, who followed in his 

 footsteps. We find among these some, whose names are household 

 words in Indian Natural History; others, full of future promise, 

 fell in the service of their country ; whilst a few yet survive. The 

 following is a list of such of these early workers whose names most 

 deserve to be recorded and recalled to memory, since we are indebted 

 to them for contributions towards our present studies, and many 

 of their names will be familiar to you in nomenclature, though the 

 individual naturalist or collector is known but to a few : — Major 



