THE ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS. 
69 
As Sir Asutosh Mookerjee has pointed out in the first 
chapter of this book, our zoological collections have been 
derived mainly from five sources, which may be tabulated as 
follows:— 
(1) The old collections of the Asiatic Society; 
(2) the marine collections made by successive Surgeon- 
Naturalists on board the R.I.M.S. ' Investigator’; 
(3) the collections made on military and political expedi¬ 
tions ; 
(4) the gifts of private donors, and 
(5) the collections made by members of the Museum 
staff. 
The zoological collections of the Asiatic Society of 
Bengal were mainly of vertebrate animals. They were 
housed for many years in glass cases by no means dust-proof 
and their successive curators had little time or opportu¬ 
nity to protect them against the ravages of animals and 
vegetable pests. That many of Blyth’s specimens still exist 
in good condition is a testimony to the climate of Calcutta in 
so far as the preservation of zoological specimens is con¬ 
cerned. 
A glance through the Asiatick Researches and old volumes 
of the Proceedings and the Journal of the Asiatic Society 
of Bengal reveals a host of names of well-known naturalists, 
most of them contributors alike to the collections and to the 
publications of the Society:— 
J. Armstrong, Valentine Ball, W. H. Benson, William 
and Henry Blanford, Edward Blyth, W. E. Brooks, Theodore 
Cantor, John Cockburn, Francis Day, G. E. Dobson, H. H. 
Godwin-Austen, Thomas Hardwicke, Brian Hodgson, Allan 
Hume, Thomas Hutton, T. C. Jerdon, John McClelland, 
Geoffrey and Henry Nevill, J. T. Pearson, F. A. de Roep- 
storff, W. Roxburgh, Ferdinand Stoliczka, Robert Swinhoe, 
W. H. Sykes, William Theobald, S. R. Tickell, R. C. Tytler. 
In this long list the names of three distinguished mem¬ 
bers of the Geological Survey of India stand out pre-eminent 
in reference to the zoological collections—those of William 
Blanford (with which that of his brother Henry, meteorologist 
