42 Anyiual Address. [Feb. 



noblest mosques in India ; and at Gaur there are specimens of work in 

 coloured tiles which is unique in Bengal. The repair and where possible 

 the restoration of some of these beautiful buildings is a work of great 

 difficulty and delicacy, but it has begun, and I trust that the result both 

 there and at Bhubaneshwar will be the preservation to the student of 

 Idstory and of art of specimens, which ho will prize, of the ancient archi- 

 tecture of Bengal. I have just returned from a long promised visit to 

 the great fort of Rhotas. The buildings are comparatively modern, 

 but they are historical, and they are almost the only examples we have 

 in Bengal of the conditions of eastern military life a couple of hundred 

 years ago. Fortunately these buildings are almost perfect, practically 

 as sound as when Hamilton visited and mapped them in 1824, and they 

 will command, perhaps, increasingly as the generations pass, the keen 

 interest of the traveller and the historian of this country. 



On the scientific side of the Society's work we had a particularly 

 minute and convincing investigation by Major Rogers on the connection 

 between malaria and water-supply. His enquiries were conducted in 

 the riparian municipalities to the North of Calcutta and are now under 

 the practical consideration of the local bodies which govern them. Sir 

 George King, Major Prain and Mr. Gamble have been adding to their 

 botanical discoveries, and Major Alcock has pursued those singularly 

 interesting studies in marine life which in bis modesty he calls Zoolo- 

 gical Gleanings. His observations on the protective and warning devices 

 of animals, of their adaptations of colour for their protection from their 

 habitual enemies, would attract the quick attention of any who have the 

 smallest knowledge of zoological science. I wish some of these learned 

 gentlemen would take compassion on those who are unlearned or busy, 

 or both. They would earn the grateful thanks of those who stand 

 sorrowfully outside their ranks, if they would prepare for us small guide- 

 books to the bird-life and the plant-life of defined areas, where birds 

 and flowers are many and attractive. It is impossible for any one but a 

 skilled botanist to track out a flower through the vast pages of Hooker's 

 seven volumes. Mr. Gamble set an excellent example by his manual on 

 the trees and shrubs of the Eastern Himalays, but his book is meant 

 for the forester or the planter. What is wanted is a popularly written 

 manual, all the better if it is illustrated, in which the enquirer can easily 

 and quickly learn the names of the birds and flowers around him. 

 Illustrations can now be very cheaply made, and those who have seen 

 the charming little volumes of, I think, the Tract Society on the common 

 wild flowers of England, will know how a book of the kind attracts 

 hundreds to studies in natural history, who otherwise pass by unheeded 

 the beautiful objects with which nature surrounds their path. A small 



