42 Address. [Feb,, 



have under consideration a proposal for a new manuscript room. These 

 are the two next most pressing needs, a large outlay on iron-racks 

 for storage purposes having been met during 1886. We have also at 

 considerable trouble verified our stock of publications, and our accounts 

 are now audited by professional accountants, as it was found that the 

 time and labour demanded were such as could not reasonably be re- 

 quired from any private member. Before reviewing the work done 

 during the year, I must tender my grateful acknowledgments for the 

 services rendered by the office-bearers of the Society during my tenure 

 of office : — to Mr. H. M. Percival who has carried on the duties of 

 General Secretary and Treasurer during the greater part of the year ; to 

 Mr. Wood-Mason for his services as Natural History Secretary, and to 

 Dr. Hoernle, Mr. Beames, Mr. Beveridge, Pandit Hara Prasada Sastri, 

 and Mr. Hogg, who have at different times aided in the discharge of the 

 various duties appertaining to the office of Philological Secretary. I 

 would therefore call upon you for a vote of thanks to those gentlemen 

 for their voluntary services, afforded in addition to arduous official duties, 

 and without which we could not have succeeded in carrying on the work 

 of the Society. {Carried unanimously.') 



Obituary. — It has ever been the painful duty of your President to 

 bring more prominently before you on these occasions the names of 

 those whom death has removed from us, and who have done good work 

 through, or for, our Society. I have not been spared in this respect, 

 and it is now my duty to announce the deaths of three distinguished 

 members of our Society during the year, Mr. Edward Thomas, Mr. 

 James Gibbs, and Mr. Arthur Grote. Mr. Thomas was a member of the 

 Bengal Covenanted Civil Service, and some account of his life and 

 writings was given at a previous meeting by the President and by Dr. 

 Mitra, and will be found recorded in the Proceedings of the Society. 

 Prom 1848 to 1884, he contributed numerous papers, on Indian, Indo- 

 Baktrian, Indo-Sassanian, Iranian, and Armenian archaeology and 

 numismatics, to the pages of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 

 and of this Society, and to the Numismatic Chronicle, the Journal of the 

 Numismatic Society of London, and the Journal Asiatique of Paris. He 

 also edited Prinsep's papers on ' Indian Antiquities,' and took a 

 principal part in the international edition of ' Marsden's Numismata 

 Orientalia ', besides giving us, in his ' Revenues of the Moghul Empire 

 in India ' and ' Chronicles of the Pathan kings of Dehli,' records 

 which must ever remain standard works of reference for Indian 

 history. Mr. James Gibbs was a member of the Bombay Covenanted 

 Civil Service, and was an active resident member up to a short time 

 ago. It was only late in 1885 that he published a pamphlet ' On some 



