1888.] Lt.-Col. Cunningham — Letter on Mongers Equation. 199 



of beads and bangles made of sections of cbauk shells {Mazza rapa). 

 Their possession of lapis lazuli and chauk shells alone proves that they 

 must have had commercial relations with very distant peoples from the 

 extreme North- West to the extreme South of India. 



Camp, Adoni, R. Bruce Foote. 



26th November, 1888. 



The Natdral History Secretary read the follov^ing letter : 



S. M. E. Chatham, England, 10th August, 1888. 

 Sir, 



In a footnote on p. 74 of Proceedings Asiatic Society of Bengal for 

 1888, Babu Asutosh Mukhopadhyay complains that a certain solution 

 of Monge's differential equation of a conic, published by him in the 

 Journal, Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. LVI, p. 138 (issued in India in 

 November 1887) has been reproduced by me in the " Messenger of 

 Mathematics" for January 1888 ; and he complains that it is "repro- 

 duced of course without acknowledgment that it had been given before " 

 (by him). 



The facts are that my paper was in my Editor's hands either in 1886 

 or early in 1887, and was in type and out of my hands about December 

 1887, (although the latter part of it containing the solution in question 

 appears in the Number for January 1888). 



These facts can be verified by application to the Editor. 



I deny therefore that any part of my Paper is in any sense a repro- 

 ductio7i, and I submit that the imputation of reproduction of course with- 

 out aclcnowledgment was unjustifiable. 



I shall show in another place that the results which I published 

 eleven years ago, which are held up in the Paper quoted at great length 

 (10 pages) as irrelevant^ totally erroneous, &c., are not quite so absurd as 

 therein depicted. 



Yours faithfully, 

 Allan Cunningham, Lt.-Col., R. E. 



Babu Asutosh Mukhopadhyay made the following remarks in reply 

 thereto. 



Gentlemen, 



A question of priority is always so delicate a matter that 

 I would willingly keep myself aloof from it, only if it were pos- 

 sible ; but as Lt.-Col. Cunningham is evidently anxious to see the 

 matter discussed, I cannot honestly keep back, specially as I feel that 

 the remarks to which he takes objection, were not only perfectly justi- 

 fiable at the time they were written, but remain so up to the present 



