xii Introduction. 



importance of Blyth's labours in zoology in maintaining and extending the 

 character and standing of our Society, this dispatch concludes thus: "His 

 Excellency in Council considers, therefore, that if under such circumstances 

 Mr. Blyth should, after twenty years' service, be compelled to retire from ill 

 health, brought on very much by his exertions in pursuit of science, it would 

 not be creditable to the Government that he should be allowed to leave with- 

 out any retiring pension." 



Meanwhile, Blyth was only enabled to remain at his post by the facilities 

 which the Council afforded him of making short successive visits to Burma. 

 He was for some five months in that province, from which, and more espe- 

 cially from the Tonzalin Biver, he communicated several interesting letters. 

 His camp life there agreed with him, and he had kind friends like Phayre, 

 Eytche, and Tiekell to associate with and take care of him. His return to 

 Calcutta was always attended by a relapse, and the hot season of 1862 

 brought him to a state for which there was no alternative but instant depar- 

 ture for Europe. As yet, however, no orders had been received from home in 

 ' regard to the pension. It was clear that for these it would not do to wait, 

 and the Council* under the emergency gave Blyth a year's leave on full pay. 

 He had hardly gone when the expected reply was received, and this, notwith- 

 standing the Yiceroy's • strongly expressed opinion, provedf an unfavourable 

 one. Eventually}: a pension of £150 a year was conceded, owing, I believe, 

 mainly to the untiring efforts made in London on Blyth's behalf by the late 

 Sir P. Cautley and Dr. Falconer. 



By the end of 1864 our Society's negociations with the Government for 

 the transfer of its collections to the Indian Museum had been brought to a 

 successful close, and at the November meeting the following just tribute was 

 paid to our late Curator in the form of a resolution, which, on the Council's 

 proposition, was carried unanimously : — 



" On the eve of transferring the zoological collections of the Society to 

 Government, to form the nucleus of an Imperial Museum of Natural History, 

 the Society wishes to record its sense of the important services rendered by 

 its late Curator, Mr. Blyth, in the formation of those collections. In the 

 period of twenty-two years during which Mr. Blyth was Curator of the 

 Society's Museum, he has formed a large and valuable series of specimens 

 richly illustrative of the ornithology of India and the Burmese Peninsula, 

 and has added largely to the Mammalian and other vertebrate collections of 



* The Council's action in anticipation of the vote of a meeting was cordially approved 

 at our annual meeting of 1863, but was protested against as illegal by Mr. Oldham, 

 t J. B. A. S. xxxii. 32. + J. B. A. S. xxxiii. 73. 



