CURATORS AND SUPERINTENDENTS. 
109 
number of his communications to the Society reach the 
total of fifty-three. 
In 1861 Blyth’s health gave way and he was only able to 
remain in India because the Council of the Society afforded 
him facilities for several visits to Burma, and in 1862 he was 
forced to leave India on a year’s leave with the intention of 
remaining permanently in Europe. 
In 1864 the Society had completed its negotiations for 
the transfer of its collections to the Indian Museum, and at 
the November meeting of that year the following resolution 
was passed :— 
“ On the eve of transferring the zoological collections of the Society 
to Gfovernment, to form the nucleus of an Imperial Museum of Natural 
History, the Society wishes to record its sense of the important services 
rendered by its late Curator, Mr, Blyth, in the formation of those collec¬ 
tions. In the period of twmnty-two years during which Mr. Blyth Avas 
Curator of the Society’s Museum, he has formed a large and valuable 
series of specimens richly illustrative of the ornithology of India and the 
Burmese Peninsula, and has added largely to the mammalian and other 
vertebrate collections of the Museum ; Avhile, by his numerous descrip¬ 
tive papers and catalogues of the Museum specimens, he has made the 
materials thus amassed bj’ him subservient to zoological science at large, 
and specially valuable to those engaged in the study of the vertebrate 
fauna of India and its adjoining countries.” 
Blyth’s zoological work did not cease when he left India. 
In January, 1864, he visited Dublin, where he read two 
papers before the Royal Irish Academy. He also attended a 
meeting of the Geological Society of Dublin and took part in 
a discussion on geological epochs. For the next few years 
the connection which he had established in early life with 
Land and Water and later with the Field gave him inter¬ 
esting literary occupation. Many of the short notes that 
he contributed to these journals, signed ''Zoophilus,” were 
used by Darwin. His last work was a paper on the Gruidae 
or crane family published in the Field. 
Blyth died of heart disease on the 27th December^ 
The zoological papers published by Blyth have reference 
to all groups of the vertebrate animals except the ascidians 
