58 
THE INDIAN MUSEUM: 1814—1914. 
exhibited, as there were also 104 cases unpacked in the 
godown. The collections rapidly increased, as the members 
of the Survey, now a round dozen strong, began to push 
their inquiries into all parts of the country. Of all those 
who were then on the staff, Mr. F. R. Mallet, who joined in 
1859, is the only member still alive. What the conditions of 
such work were in those days may be conjectured from the 
fact that, of 23 geologists who were appointed between the 
years 1846 and 1859, no less than nine died on service, and 
of these seven died within three years of their appointment. 
The requirements of the Survey soon began to outgrow 
the accommodation in Hastings Street. In most of the 
annual reports submitted by Dr. Oldham between the years 
1859 and 1868, reference is made to the inconvenience of the 
building and the impossibility of exhibiting the specimens to 
good advantage in the small and badly-lit rooms of a private 
house; but it was still many years before relief was afforded. 
Although the removal of the geological collections belonging 
to Government had enabled the Asiatic Society to devote 
more space to their own collections, the care of these had 
already become an unmanageable burden. More room and a 
larger staff than the Society could provide were required for 
their preservation, and the Society soon began to press on 
the proposal for the foundation of an Imperial Museum at 
Calcutta The breaking out of the Mutiny retarded the 
consideration of these proposals for a time, but in 1862 
Government announced that the time had come when the 
duty of providing a public Museum should be taken in hand, 
and conditions were settled under which a Board of Trustees 
was appointed to take over the Society’s collections. In 
1866 their geological collections were made over by the 
Society, but still emained in their own building, and it was 
not until ten years later that they were amalgamated with 
the collections of the Geological Survey and incorporated in 
the Geological Museum. The collections included minerals 
fossils and meteorites; of the minerals, most have now be¬ 
come of little value or use, having been superseded by the 
finer specimens subsequently acquired directly by the Geo¬ 
logical Survey. The fossils, however, include a valuable,. 
