40 
caged specimens in tlie world, he bought for £2 a head ; and his 
collection, despite casualties in the passage down the river, con- 
tained when it reached Calcutta; sixteen Tigers, a Lcopar.l, allear, 
two Cheetas, three Caracals, two Ehinoceroses ; and a Giraffe, which 
carried a saddle and was daily ridden. But there were difficulties 
and delays in the way of shipment, and the speculation collapsed, 
though one of the Tigers which reached England sold for £140. 
11 18G0 he volunteered to accompany the expedition to North 
China as naturalist, hut was not allowed to do so, and in the 
following year his health gave way; and though he spent some five 
monUis in Burniah, the hot season of 1SG2 reduced him to a state 
recpiiruig immediate return to Europe. Government gave him a 
pension, and on the transfer of tlie i\siatic Society’s Zoological 
Collections to Government, to form the nucleus of an Imperial 
Iiiseiim of Natural History, the following resolution is recorded 
as carried unanimously In the period of twenty-two years 
during which Mr. Blyth was curator of the Society’s iiuiscum, he 
has formed a large and valuable series of specimens richly illustra- 
tive of the ornithology of India and the Burmese peninsula, and 
las added largely to the mammalian and other vertebrate collections 
of the museum, while by his numerous descriptive papers and 
catalogues of the museum specimens, he has made the materials 
tlius amassed by him subservient to zoological science at large, and 
especially valuable to those engaged in the study of the vertebrate 
fauna of India and its adjoining countries.” 
In the years which passed between Blyth’s return from India 
and his death he was not idle. He contributed to the ‘Ibis,’ 
‘Annals of Natural History,’ and ‘Proceedings of the Zoological 
Society,’ and wrote for ‘Land and Water,’ and ‘The Eield,’ under 
the pseudonym of “Zoophilus ;” he had also in hand at the time of 
his death a work on the “ Origination of Species,” a subject on which 
he says : “ I think I can throw some light.” Ilis last published 
papers were in ‘The Field,’ in 1873, on the Griiidm or Crane 
family. Shortly after their publication he ivent to Antwerp for 
change, returned full of what he had seen in the Zoological Garden 
there, where he thought ho had found a new species of Bhinoceros, 
and he died in December of that year, aged a day or two less than’ 
sixty-tbree. 
Thus far I have given you merely a hurried often 
