INTRODUCTION. 
5 
premises of the Society till 1856, when the portion of the 
collection owned by the Government of India was removed 
and housed at No. 1', Hastings Street, in connection with 
the Geological Survey of India, then recently established. 
The Government, at the same time, expressed their readiness 
to receive the specimens owned by the Society; but this 
could not be done; for the Society, though fully alive to the 
fact that the collection was likely to be better preserved, 
better laid out and better taken care of by the members of 
the Geological Survey, refused to sanction their removal on 
the ground that the dissociation of a part of the Museum— 
and that the least expensive, highly valuable as it was—might 
not only prove injurious to the interests of the Society, but 
possibly postpone indefinitely the great object which the 
Society had cherished since 1837, namely that of seeing a 
national museum established here on a scale worthy of the 
Metropolis of British India. 
The transference of the Museum of Economic Geology, 
however, immediately relieved to some extent the steadily 
increasing pressure on the limited space in the premises of the 
Society, and, for a short while, more room became available 
for the display of the archaeological and zoological collections. 
But the latter had grown with surprising rapidity under the 
able management of Blyth, with the enthusiastic co-opera¬ 
tion of the members of the Society; and it became fairly 
apparent that their further growth would before long be 
arrested by reason as well of the restricted space as of the 
limited funds at the disposal of the Society. 
In view of these circumstances, in 1856, the members 
of the Society decided to submit a memorial to the Govern¬ 
ment of India for the establishment in Calcutta of an Im¬ 
perial Museum, to which they expressed their readiness to 
transfer all their extensive collections except their library. 
The dark days of the Mutiny, however,'most inauspiciously 
intervened, and the consideration of the proposal was neces¬ 
sarily postponed. Two years later, the question was revived 
and a representation was submitted to Government in which 
the Society pressed for the foundation of an Imperial Museum 
at Calcutta. 
