60 Address. [Feb. 



Let us hope tliat botli the Secretary of State and the Government of 

 India will listen attentively to his proposals before they adopt other 

 counsels. It would be a boon to all interested in Indian Art and Archaeo- 

 logy if they could obtain by subscription the volumes of the Survey, 

 containing 60 beautiful plates with the letter press, for Rs. 20, instead 

 of at double or treble that cost through a publisher, and it is computed 

 that a moderate subscription list would render this easily practicable. 



The inscriptions it is expected will be issued in quarterly parts, 

 either with or without other miscellaneous papers on archasological 

 matters. 



A7ithropology. — The ethnographic enquiry which has been going on 

 in Bengal for the last three years is now approaching completion, and a 

 first instalment of the results is likely to be published in the form of a 

 volume on ' The Tribes and Castes of Bengal ' before the end of the 

 current year. The scheme of this volume, of which the greater part is 

 DOW in type, is purely ethnographic in the strict sense of the word, and 

 it attempts to do little more than describe the internal structure, cus- 

 toms, and marriage system of all the castes and tribes found within the 

 Province of Bengal. As the work is intended to serve administrative as 

 well as scientific purposes, it is cast in the form of a glossary showing 

 castes, tribes and their subdivisions in alphabetical order. Tables 

 grouping these under their main heads are given in an Appendix, so as to 

 illustrate the almost incredible extent to which the original social groups 

 have broken up and multiplied. The large question of physical charac- 

 teristics will be treated in a second volume, containing the measurements 

 of most of the chief tribes in Bengal, the N. W. Provinces, Central Pro- 

 vinces, and the Panjab. In this volume, I understand, an attempt will 

 be made to distinguish tlie main types now discernible in th.e people of 

 Northern India, and to ascertain how far these types correspond with the 

 divisions based upon 1 anguages. For this latter we have a useful 

 review of our present knowledge in Professor Fried. Miiller's recent 

 work on th.e language of all peoples and tribes of which grammars and 

 dictionaries exist, and for another phase of the subject L^histoire des 

 religions by M. M. Vernes. The ' Journal of the Anthropological Society ' 

 of Bombay contains a number of interesting articles, amongst which I 

 would notice one ' on demonolatry in South India ' by Bishop Caldwell ; 

 ' on explorations in the Vedirata of Ceylon,' by Mr. C. W. Stevens, and 

 ' on the formation and uses of an Anthropological Museum ' by Captain 

 R. C. Temple. 



Biology. — The series of papers entitled ' Scientific Memoirs hy 

 Medical Officers of the Army in India,' to which your attention was 

 drawn last year, has, as was expected, rescued from oblivion many 



