72 
THE INDIAN MUSEUM: 1814—1914. 
Austen the Indian Museum owes zoological collections from 
Assam and Burma of the greatest scientific value. 
The collections of the ‘ Investigator,’ or rather of the two 
‘^Investigators,’ are of such unique importance that their 
history is dealt with in a separate chapter, which we owe to 
the present Surgeon-Naturalist. The fascinating book of one 
of his predecessors—Alcock’s “Naturalist in Indian Seas’’ 
(London; John Murray: 1902)—should also be read by all 
who are interested in the natural history of eastern waters. 
As an appendix to the chapter on the ‘ Investigator ’ 
it is convenient here to allude to the specimens obtained in 
1908-1909 by the Bengal Fisheries Steamer ‘ Golden Crown,’ 
from which we gained in particular an invaluable series of the 
rarer and larger rays of the Bay of Bengal, as well as many 
representatives of the sponges and coelenterates, molluscs 
and Crustacea characteristic of its shallower waters. This 
collection is proving particularly useful for comparison with 
that of the ‘ Investigator,’ the successive surgeon-naturalists 
on board which have until recently devoted most of their 
attention, as has been natural and proper in the circumstan¬ 
ces, to the deep-sea fauna. We have to thank both Dr. J. 
Travis Jenkins, late scientific adviser on fisheries to the 
Government of Bengal, and also Capt G. Mann, skipper of 
the trawler, for devoting much time and trouble, in a total 
absence of scientific equipment, to the accumulation of a 
mass of valuable material, the classification of which is still 
by no means complete.* 
In passing under rapid and necessarily superficial review 
the various military and political expeditions on which zoo¬ 
logical specimens were obtained for the Indian Museum, it will 
be convenient to group them geographically and, as the majo¬ 
rity took place on or near the northern frontier of the Indian 
Empire, to proceed along a line extending, with considerable 
gaps, from Persia in the North-West to the Chinese province 
of Yunnan in the extreme East. 
The first collection that must be noticed on this plan is 
1 J. Travis Jenkins, Observations on the Shallow-water Fauna of the 
Bay of Bengal made on the Bengal Fisheries Steam-Trawler ‘‘Golden 
Crown,” 1908-09, Rec. Ind. Mus., Vol. VII, pp. 51-64 (1912). 
