THE ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS. 
73 
that made on the journeys of the Persian Boundary Com¬ 
mission (1870-72) by Major Oliver St. John (with the help 
of a collector from the Museum) and by Blanford. The 
zoological results of this expedition were published by Blan¬ 
ford in 1876 in the second volume of “ Eastern Persia” (Lon¬ 
don : Macmillan & Co.). With a few exceptions^ invertebrates 
were not collected, and even the fish remained unnamed 
in Calcutta until 1910, when they were described in the 
Records of the Indian Museum by Dr. Jenkins. The whole 
collection is one of great value, for little zoological work has 
since been done in parts of the country traversed; the 
majority of the specimens still remain in good condition. 
Collections from three other political expeditions to the 
frontier of Persia and Afghanistan are preserved in the 
Indian Museum; those of the Afghan Delimitation Commis¬ 
sion of 1885, the Afghan-Baluch Boundary Commission of 
1896 and the Seistan Arbitration Commission of 1903-05. 
On the first of these Dr. J. E. T. Aitchison collected 
large numbers of vertebrates and invertebrates, on both of 
which he published a report in the Transactions of the 
Linnean Society in 1887. On the same expedition Capt. 
C. E. Yate obtained a considerable series of mammals, which 
were described in the same year by Dr. J. Scully in the 
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Capt. Agate’s 
specimens were presented direct to the Indian Museum, but 
of the larger and more general collection only duplicates 
were sent to Calcutta. 
The other two expeditions on the Afghan frontier were 
both under the command of Sir Henry McMahon, now Sec¬ 
retary to the Government of India in the Foreign Department, 
w'ho took great personal interest in the specimens obtained ; 
in 1898 Captain (now Lieutenant-Colonel) F. P. Maynard, 
I.M.S.,-also supervised the collector’s work. More specimens 
were obtained in that year than in 1903 to 1905 and few 
species not represented in the earlier collection were found in 
the second ; with the exception of fish, of which several new 
species from the Helmand basin were described by Mr. 
Tate Regan of the British Museum in the Journal of the 
Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1906 and by Dr. B. L. Chaud- 
