12 Prospectus of an Indian 



patible with the circumstances in which we are placed, so as 

 to render our labours useful to the country. 



The plan now proposed for the constitution of a Society 

 strictly directed to specific objects connected with natural 

 science, differs but slightly, we are informed by our friend 

 Mr. Walker, from that of one of the oldest and most suc- 

 cessful Societies in Europe, the Academia Natures Curio- 

 sorum, which may have arisen out of somewhat similar cir- 

 cumstances in Germany, during the latter part of the six- 

 teenth century, at a period when too few naturalists were found 

 in any one city to carry on the duties of a Society. That 

 Academy exists only in its Actce, or transactions ; it has no 

 meetings or local habitation, and its business, which consists 

 merely of the publication of memoirs, is conducted by a tem- 

 porary secretary in any part of Germany where the individual 

 on whom that honor is conferred may happen to reside. 



In principle this is precisely what is proposed, so that it 

 is so far fortunate to have an illustrious and successful ex- 

 ample of what some might otherwise regard as visionary 

 and impracticable. 



One of the first objections that will be urged against the 

 proposed institution is, that it will have a tendency to injure 

 other Societies now existing in India ; but the same objection 

 might have been urged against every Society that has sprung 

 up since the time the first was formed. 



Our own little experience in India enables us to state, that 

 the greatest danger to which Societies are here exposed, is 

 the patronage of objects which are foreign to the peculiar 

 qualifications of their leading members. Each of our three 

 Societies of Calcutta afford instances, which have fallen with- 

 in our own observation, of the great and serious error of this. 

 So far therefore from a Society exclusively directed to the 

 promotion of natural history proving injurious to any of the 

 other institutions already existing, we feel assured that the 

 change would prove a great relief to some of them, especially 

 as we are prepared to show several instances in which they 



