390 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [March, 



an officer of the Society. The estimates and report of that Committee 

 were duly sanctioned and approved of by the Society, and reports of 

 progress were from time to time made and confirmed ; all of which 

 would be found in the proceedings of those years. The coloured plates 

 were also exhibited with these reports, and unequivocally pronounced 

 to be most creditable to the artists, as exact copies of the drawings, 

 which together with the determination that the whole of the drawings 

 were to be published, and not a selection from them, was the principle 

 adopted by the Committee and confirmed by the Society. Whatever 

 then had been done was the act of the Society and of no one individual. 

 With respect to Dr. Cantor's Chusan drawings, the superintendance 

 of part of these also had fallen under his management when Sub- 

 Secretary. He was unable to say by what authority this undertaking 

 had been commenced, but he received orders from the late Secretary, 

 Mr. Torrens, to obtain estimates, and no bargain was concluded without 

 his full knowledge and approbation ; it being simply his (Mr. Pidding- 

 ton's) duty to carry on the Society's work as ordered by the Secretary. 

 Dr. Cantor, himself a first rate artist, had pronounced his highest ap- 

 probation of the style in which his work had been so far reproduced as 

 exceeding any thing he supposed could have been done in Calcutta, as 

 had also the late Dr. Griffiths. With respect to the charges, it was 

 impossible for him to do more than to state generally that the colouring 

 of plates of drawings of Natural History, was always most expensive, and 

 that all other accessaries also were required to be of the first rate talent 

 and quality procurable, and to this was to be attributed the high charges 

 for these works, if they really were high, which he did not think they 

 were. As to the gross amount charged in the account, of that he could 

 not speak, having, as he desired expressly to state, no control whatsoever 

 over the expenditure or payment, farther than to audit bills, but the whole 

 of the estimates and every paper connected with these publications had 

 been specially and most carefully made over by him to the late Secretary 

 in March last, and these, together with the accountant's vouchers for 

 payments ought to be forthcoming. 



The original drawings and sets of the lithographed copies were now 

 produced by the Librarian and handed round for examination of the 

 members. 



Mr. Hume then observed that examination of the drawings and 



