136 Memoirvs of the Indian Museum. [Vor. VI, 1918.] 
in Jullunder district, and matriculated from the Doaba High School at Jullunder. 
After studying for two years at the Forman Christian College, Lahore, he passed the 
Intermediate Examination in Science of the Punjab University. He then joined the 
Lahore Medical College; but after two years, owing to a serious illness, he had to give 
up his studies just as he had passed the Preliminary Scientific examination. These 
two years served however to give him a good foundation for his biological studies 
later on. 
‘His educational career as a medical student having been thus unexpectedly cut 
short, he joined the Government College, Lahore, and obtained the degree of B.Sc. 
in 1908, taking as his subjects Botany and Zoology. He was the first to join the 
regular M.Sc. class in Zoology, which was started in the same year; and while thus 
engaged in his further studies he was appointed to a demonstratorship in the depart- 
ment. In 1910 he obtained a good second class in the examination for the degree of 
M.Sc. in the Punjab University. 
‘By this time his inclination for outdoor observation and aptitude as a naturalist 
had become fully established; he was a keen collector and student of insect life; 
and before taking up the study of a special group he had equipped himself as an 
entomologist by paying several visits to the Imperial Agricultural College at Pusa 
and the Indian Museum at Calcutta, where he carefully examined the collections and 
identified his own specimens. In 1912 he was appointed to the Provincial Educa- 
tional Service as Assistant Professor of Biology in the Government. College, Lahore, 
and now began to examine and collect plants with the same keenness and care which 
he had hitherto bestowed on animal life. He selected the Aphids for special investi- 
gation, since this group gave him the opportunity of studying the plant hosts as well 
as the insects themselves. 
‘He resolutely declined marriage till he should have done a sufficient amount of 
research work to submit a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Science. The thesis, 
now published in the present form, was presented in 1914; and both the examiners 
having expressed their approval of it as a sufficient qualification for the degree, its 
author would in the ordinary course have been invested with the degree in 1915, and 
would thus have been the first person to receive the Doctorate (except honoris causae) 
in the Punjab University. Unfortunately for Biological teaching in the Punjab, 
Bashambar Das died of an attack of cholera in May 1915, contracted while attending 
on two students suffering from the disease in the College Hostel.’’ 
