PREFACE. IX 



in India the majority have not enjoyed the same opportunities, 

 and their curiosity is merely raised without hope of entire 

 satisfaction. But against this view it may be urged that a 

 monthly lecture would be but a tardy mode of communicating 

 knowledge, more especially if the subject were to be changed 

 on each occasion. A course of lectures might be a good suc- 

 cedaneum to the system, but the spirit of the monthly re-union 

 must be general and exhibitory, to answer the object intended;. 



Again we are insensibly falling into a review of matters be- 

 yond the proper scope of a Preface, which should confine itself 

 to the contents of the volume it precedes, or to the mutual 

 concerns of the editor and his constituents. 



On the cover of more than one monthly Journal we have 

 already explained to what extent we have been enabled to 

 increase the number and accuracy of our lithographed plates 

 this year, by putting in requisition the talents of our mofussil 

 friends. When the facilities of drawing on transfer paper for 

 lithographic printing become more generally known, we may 

 expect still further advantage from its adoption by travellers, 

 engineers, botanists, and naturalists, who are, or ought to be, 

 artists also. It is now known from actual experience that a 

 transfer drawing, packed in a tin roll, may be subjected to a 

 journey of 1000 miles, either in the hottest or the dampest 

 period of the year with impunity. Most of the imperfections 

 in the plates of the Sewalik fossils are due to want of care in 

 passing them on to the stone, rather than to imperfections in 

 the original drawings. 



Some confusion has arisen this year, in the numbering 

 and placing of the plates, from continual and unavoidable 

 postponements which it is needless to particularize. One 

 plate (of the Bhitari inscription) has been reserved for the 

 ensuing volume, that full justice may be done to the able 

 elucidation of its important contents. And here we may be 

 allowed a moment's exultation at the highly curious train of 

 discovery, connected with this monument, which has been 

 developed in the pages of the Journal. Not only has a dynasty 

 before wholly unknown to the Indian historian, been traced by 

 coins and inscriptions through seven generations in its own 

 line, but two collateral alliances with other reigning princes 



