volume, they would in all probability have withdrawn them altogether. 

 During three years of careful endeavour to get up a volume suitable to 

 the reputation of the Society, I was successful (owing to the want of fit 

 material) in getting authority from the Committee of Papers for only one 

 undertaking, the publication, namely, of the highly coloured specimens 

 in Natural History collected during Sir Alexander Burnes' Mission 

 to Affghanistan, with Dr. Lord's notes upon them, to be edited by 

 Mr. Blyth. In fact, the Journal had absorbed the Researches. Rapi- 

 dity of publication was become a first want ; while the Society, losing 

 its exclusively archaiological character, and entering largely into Gene- 

 ral Science, though it deserved and required an organ through which 

 to speak more than ever, was doomed to compulsory silence by its 

 patronage of the periodical which had superseded its own peculiar publi- 

 cation. The Society patronised, but could not profit by a scientific 

 miscellany, known even in Continental Europe by its name. 



As nothing could be more unsatisfactory than this state of things as 

 respects the relative positions of the Society I served, and the Journal 

 I owned and edited, I determined upon resigning the Secretaryship, and 

 giving up the Journal. My plans as respected the disposition of the 

 property were not matured, but I availed myself of the kind offer of 

 Mr. Piddington, to edit the remaining numbers of the year 1842, and 

 I withdrew from all connection with the conduct of the periodical 

 about six months ago. I should expalin that in using the word pro- 

 perty, applied to my Journal, I do not mean to attach to it the idea of 

 value in a pecuniary sense. As a Civil Servant of the Company, I 

 could not engage in the conduct of a publication with reference to its 

 pecuniary value. In the same way as James Prinsep, and Professor 

 O'Shaughnessy, I edited the Journal solely to make it pay for itself, 

 and, as my contributors I trust will acknowledge, spared no expense in 

 maps, in plates, and in plans, to make the publication worthy of the papers 



