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He made a valuable collection of coins, including many uniques ; 
a portion of these were unfortunately stolen, but the remainder, 
together with his collection of shells, he presented to the British 
Museum. 
His most numerous literary and scientific publications appeared 
from time to time in the Journal of the Asiatic Society , to which he 
acted as co-secretary, and afterwards vice-president and secretary to 
the Natural History Department. 
He also compiled a comparative dictionary of Chinese words, and 
made translations of several Persian poems and other works, which 
were never published. 
In 1839 he visited the Straits of Malacca for his health, and 
there he made the acquaintance of Rajah Sir James Brook. He 
went home to England in 1843, where he married, and returned the 
following year. 
The remainder of his time in India, until his final return to 
England in 1850, was spent at Calcutta, where he associated with 
the leading scientific and literary men of the day, together with 
many other notable people. 
On leaving India he gave up active work, and shortly settled 
down at Seacliff, Haddingtonshire, where he spent the remainder of 
his life. 
He was now elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 
in whose proceedings he took a lively interest, although prevented 
by uncertain health from taking an active part in their meetings. 
He also became a member of various other societies in this country. 
At all times of a retiring and unambitious disposition, he showed 
little inclination to enter society afresh and without the companion- 
ship of his former friends, but preferred rather to cherish and extend 
those kindred studies which had been so much to him in the past. 
In the quiet of his unostentatious life at Seacliff, he found a never- 
failing source of pleasure in his library, his laboratory, and in the 
wider field of nature. His was essentially a pure love of scientific 
truth for its own sake, and, although furnished with introductions 
which would have brought him in contact with many celebrated 
literary and scientific men, his extreme humility and modesty of 
self-assertion prevented him from availing himself of these oppor- 
tunities of bringing his own learning into greater prominence. 
