52 
THE INDIAN MUSEUM: 1814—1914. 
ground floor of the Society’s building in Park Street, but by 
1835 we find that they had accumulated to such an extent 
that it became necessary to discuss proposals for converting 
the Society’s Museum into a national concern, and to employ 
a paid Curator, Government sanctioning a grant of Rs. 200 
a month for this purpose, to which the Court of Directors 
added Rs. 50 a month for preparing specimens and maintain¬ 
ing the collection in order. Up to this time the whole of the 
collections, archaeological, geological, and zoological, were 
kept together and under the charge of one person, but the 
opening up of the Raniganj coal-field and the reports of Dr. 
Heifer and other scientific officers had directed so much 
attention to the mineral resources of the country that it was 
resolved to establish a Museum of Economic Geology, and 
it is accordingly at that time that we must consider that our 
Geological Museum was founded. 
In 1841 a typical collection of mineral specimens was 
brought out from home by Captain Tremenheere, and placed 
in the rooms of the Society in the charge of Mr, Piddington, 
who was also Curator of the Museum of Economic Geology 
for India” which had been inaugurated by Government in 
the previous year, its collections being housed with those of 
the Asiatic Society on the Society’s premises in Park Street. 
This arrangement lasted till 1856, the original collection 
made by the Society and the nucleus of the national collec¬ 
tion being kept together, but at this period the Geological 
Section had so outgrown the accommodation provided in 
these rooms that Government determined to remove the 
Museum of Economic Geology to a new site. The Geological 
Survey, with which its subsequent history is intimately con¬ 
nected, had only recently been established as a separate 
Department, though several enthusiastic geologists had either 
been employed by Government, or had spent their leisure 
time, in surveying and reporting on various parts of the 
country. Among the most conspicuous of these were perhaps 
Dr. Voysey, the first geologist employed by Government, in 
1818; Mr. Williams, who first examined and reported on the 
Raniganj coal-field, and whose original Journals, covering 
the period from December 1846 to just before his death in 
