VI 



Introduction. 



hitherto looked after it. The labours of Hodgson, Cantor, M'Clelland, and 

 others, had filled it with valuable Zoological specimens, which with important 

 fossil and other contributions were falling into great disorder. Prof. H. H. 

 Wilson, then our honorary agent in London, was asked to select a 

 competent man to undertake the general charge of the Museum, and the 

 appointment was oifered to and accepted by Blyth, then in weak health, and 

 professionally advised to seek a warmer climate. Provided with passage 

 and outfit by the Court of Directors, the latter arrived in Calcutta in 

 September, 1841. His letter to Mr. H. Torrens, published in our Society's 

 Proceedings for that month (vide Journ. Vol. X. Pt. 2, p. 756), expresses the 

 diffidence with which he entered on the charge of the Mineral Department of 

 the Museum ; but of this duty he was largely relieved in the following year 

 on the appointment of Mr. Piddington to all the Departments of Economic 

 Geology. He still retained the custody of the Palaeontological specimens. 



One of the duties impressed on him by our then President, Sir E. Ryan, 

 was that of furnishing monthly reports at the Society's meetings ; and in 

 October, 1841, he accordingly submitted the first of that long series of 

 useful reports which appear in our Proceedings with scarcely any inter- 

 mission for the next twenty years. Each of the monthly issues of this 

 Journal for the remainder of 1841 contains a paper by Blyth. In the first 

 of these, ' A general review of the species of True Stag,' etc., he committed 

 himself to an opinion, shared with him by Ogilby, regarding Hodgson's 

 Cervus affinis, which, as Jerdon has pointed out (Mamm. p. 252), he did not 

 recant till 1861, 



Many of Blyth's reports fill from fifteen to twenty pages, and his 

 remarks on the various contributions which reached him were just what were 

 wanted by the field observers who supplied them. The active correspondence 

 which he set on foot with these and with sportsmen, all more or less 

 naturalists, throughout India, encouraged their useful pursuits, and brought 

 him a large accession of specimens. He received in July, 1846, the 

 thanks of the monthly meeting of our Society for his exertions " in 

 opening out new channels of scientific intercourse." * He had already found 

 it necessary to apply for assistance in his Museum duties, but the Society 

 had not the means of supplementing the Government grant beyond the small 

 allowance which they gave him for house rent. Had Blyth been less devoted 

 to the special service in which he had engaged, there were not wanting to 

 him opportunities of finding far more remunerative employment in other 



* J.B.A.S. xy. p. 51. 



