Introduction. 



xm 



the Museum; while, by his numerous descriptive papers and catalogues* of 

 the Museum specimens, he has made the materials thus amassed by him sub- 

 servient to zoological science at large, and especially valuable to those engaged 

 in the study of the vertebrate fauna of India and its adjoining countries."! 



Blyth was elected an Honorary Member of the Society in the follow- 

 ing year. The Museum was now under a Board of Trustees, and a new 

 Curator, better paid, and with all the prospective advantages of a Government 

 official, had taken charge of it. "Writing to me from Malvern, in June, 

 1865, Blyth says: ".I had always a presentiment that my successor in the 

 Museum would be more adequately remunerated, beginning with just double 

 what I had after more than twenty years' work, with an additional £50 yearly, 

 and house accommodation! How very much more could I have accomplished 

 with such an income ! " "With this mild explosion he brushed off discontent, 

 and strove to make the most of his small means. His letters to me, and 

 these were frequent up to the time of my leaving India in 1868, were full of 

 his own special subject ; some of them are published in our Society's 

 Proceedings. 



In January, 1864, Blyth visited Lublin, where he read two papers 

 before the Eoyal Irish Academy. The first of these was ' On the True 

 Stags or Elaphine division of the genus Cervus,' and does not appear to 

 have been printed in extenso in the Academy's Proceedings. J His other 

 paper, £ On the Animal Inhabitants of Ancient Ireland,' was published at 

 length in the Academy's Proceedings § of January 25th. "What the extra- 

 ordinary bones were which he exhibited at the meeting, and which he 

 referred to as " probably Tibetan," was not explained in any of his letters. 



At a meeting of the Geological|| Society of Dublin, he made some 

 remarks on a paper of Professor Haughton's ' On Geological Epochs/ and 

 expressed his concurrence in Dr. Carte's identification of the bones of the 

 Polar Pear discovered in Lough Gur, in County Limerick. On further ex- 

 amination, however, these bones have been pronounced by Mr. Busk to be 

 indistinguishable^ from those of Ursus ferox. 



The question of zoological distribution will be found to have been 

 treated by Blyth, in a paper which he contributed to 'Nature' in 1871 



* Blyth's Catalogue of Mammalia was published in 1863, its last sheets being carried 

 through the press by his friend Jerdon. 

 t J. B. A. S. xxxiii. 582. 

 X Vol. yiii. Jan. 11, 1864, p. 458. 

 § Id. qu. sup. p. 472. 

 || Proceedings G. S. D. for January 13, 1864, Journ. p. 173. 



