Introduction. v 



ment. Blyth soon found himself in serious difficulties ; such literary work 

 as offered itself in his own special line of study supplied him with but 

 precarious means. In the Introduction to his edition of "White's ' Selborne/ 

 which bears date from Lower Tooting, 1836, he alludes to the anxieties 

 which then surrounded him, though "his mind/' he adds, " cleaves to its 

 favourite pursuit in defiance of many obstacles and interruptions, and eagerly 

 avails itself of every occasion to contribute a mite to the stock of general 

 information." Young as he was, Blyth had at this time earned for himself 

 a reputation as a diligent and accurate field observer, and he corresponded 

 with many of the leading naturalists of the day. He seems to have been a 

 contributor to both Loudon and Charlesworth's series of the Magazine of 

 Natural History from 1833 till his departure for India, and in one of his 

 papers of the volume for 1838 he proposed a new arrangement of Insessorial 

 birds. Bennie enlisted him as a writer in the "Eield Naturalist," and he 

 was associated with Mudie, Johnston, and Westwood, in an illustrated trans- 

 lation of Cuvier, which was published by Orr and Co. in 1840. Blyth 

 undertook the Mammals, Birds, and Keptiles in this work, adding much 

 original matter of his own, which is inclosed within brackets. A new and 

 enlarged edition of the work appeared in 1854, with important additions to 

 the Molluscs and Fishes by Dr. Carpenter. 



The Proceedings of the Zoological Society from 1837 to 1840 contain 

 a few papers read by Blyth at their meetings. One of these, on the Osteology 

 of the Great Auk, observes on the distinctive characters of Auks and 

 Penguins. In another he draws attention to peculiarities in the structure 

 of the feet of the Trogons. But the most important of these con- 

 tributions was his Monograph of the genus " Ovis," read in 1840.* He 

 here describes fifteen species of Sheep, including the then newly discovered 

 0. poll, from Pamir. At the same meeting he exhibited drawings and 

 specimens of the Yak, Kashmir Stag, Markhur, Himalayan Ibex, and other 

 Indian ruminants, his remarks on which show the attention which he had 

 already begun to give to the Zoology of India. 



Just at this time our Society had obtained from the Court of Directors 

 a grant for a paid Curator of its Museum, which had grown into a collec- 

 tion beyond what was manageable by the honorary office-bearers who had 



* Proc. Zool. Soc, July 28. This was an "Amended List" of species, of which he had 

 enumerated nine in a summary Monograph in the previous February. This paper was 

 reprinted in Taylor's Mag. of Nat. Hist, in 1841. and again with additional matter in 

 J.B.A.S. vol. x. pt. 2, p. 858. 



