16 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [Jan. 



establishing that most useful and instructive of all places of public 

 recreation, a Zoological garden. This is a subject which I trust will 

 receive public support and the countenance of the Society, and will 

 soon be reckoned among the accomplished facts of Calcutta. 



" It is a subject of congratulation in the interests of natural science, 

 that the Society has many energetic collectors, enquirers and contri- 

 butors scattered over the length and breadth of the land ; all working, 

 and zealous for its well-doing. 



" The geological, topographical, geometrical and archaeological surveys 

 are steadily progressing, and accumulating funds of information of the 

 most important nature, under the eminent men who direct their 

 operations, and to whom we may naturally look for — and from whom 

 indeed we have always received — the most valuable contributions to our 

 present stock of knowledge. With such means at our disposal, — with such 

 great opportunities,— with a Government well disposed towards the 

 pursuit of science, and some of whose members are on our roll, — with 

 an able staff anxl select committees to work each department of scienti- 

 fic enquiry, — surely we ought not to fail in contributing that quota of 

 knowledge to the great general stock, which is naturally looked for, 

 and may be expected from us by kindred societies in Europe. 



" You will have observed that it has not been altogether progress 

 during the past year. Financially the Society has been and is em- 

 barassed, but we may reasonably hope that the increasing number of 

 the members will obviate for the future this source of trouble, and 

 that the many long outstanding arrears will be speedily liquidated. 

 We have suffered too by the inscrutable hand of death. You have heard 

 an obituary notice of several eminent and staunch supporters of the 

 Society, among whom I regret to say that of Sir Gr. Everest ought to 

 have appeared. They were good and true men, earnest enquirers into 

 those questions which engage our Society and the scientific world 

 generally ; and though it is perhaps neither the time nor place to 

 allude further to what they have done, or to express our regret for 

 their loss, yet I cannot refrain from adding one tribute of regret to that 

 which has lately engaged the sympathies of men of every denomina- 

 tion, for the untimefy loss of a good man, cut off in his prime in the 

 midst of a noble work, respected and beloved alike by learned and 

 unlearned, by members of all sects 3 and every religious denomination 

 and creed. 



