24 
THE INDIAN MUSEUM: 1814—1914. 
and Arts Exhibition of Calcutta was being organized, and at 
the request of the Lieutenant-Governor the empty gallery 
was temporarily placed by the Trustees at the disposal of the 
Exhibition Committee. Dr. Anderson took the opportunity 
on this occasion to speak in the Annual Report on the 
neglect of the subject in India:— 
The subject} of Ethnology in many of its departments has hardly 
been touched, when we consider the exhaustive manner in which the 
science is handled by the great Museums of the leading capitals of 
Europe, some of which can already boast of more complete collections 
of ethnology of India than the Calcutta Museum itself. The Govern¬ 
ments of Austria, German}^ and Italy have specially deputed capable 
ethnologists to India to collect objects for the Museums of Vienna, 
Berlin, Dresden and Florence; France already possesses the most un¬ 
rivalled ethnological collection in the world. In a few years South 
Kensington Museum will also have better illustrations of certain depart¬ 
ments of ethnology than this Museum, because an officer has been 
recently specially deputed to collect specimens of Indian arts and other 
kindred objects for that institution. A year or eighteen months would 
suffice to overtake a considerable portion of India. The value of such a 
collection from a purely scientific aspect would be inestimable, while the 
light it would throw on the habits and customs of the people, their grade 
of civilization and on the study of art among them would be of the 
highest value to the state. 
What Dr. Anderson wrote more than thirty years ago 
is still true, notwithstanding the existence for some years of 
an official Ethnographical Survey of India. 
After the Calcutta Exhibition some of the temporary 
buildings on the south of the Museum were made available 
for the collections of the Bengal Economic Museum, and the 
ethnological objects and various donations of industrial 
articles presented by foreign exhibitors. These formed a 
subsidiary^ Museum. In 1885-86 the ethnological collections 
were made over to the newly-appointed officer in charge of 
the Bengal Economic Museum and the combined economic, 
ethnological, art and industrial collections belonging to the 
Government of Bengal were handed over to the Trustees of 
the Indian Museum on 1st April, 1887. 
At this time the ethnological collections were exhibited 
in the masonry buildings forming part of fche quadrangle of 
the old St. Paul’s School, and more lately occupied by the 
Bengal Secretariat Press. They were well protected, but for 
