120 
THE INDIAN MUSEUM: 1814—1914, 
Service in April, 188^6, having already had considerable expe¬ 
rience of the country, and having also been Assistant Profes¬ 
sor of Zoology in the University of Aberdeen under the late 
Professor H. A. Nicholson, F.R.S. After two years spent on 
the North-West Frontier as Medical Officer, he was appointed 
Surgeon-Naturalist to the Indian Marine Survey. In 1891 he 
officiated for some months as Resident Physician and Profes¬ 
sor of Pathology at the Calcutta Medical College, and in Sep¬ 
tember 1892 was appointed Deputy Sanitary Commissioner, 
Metropolitan and Eastern Bengal Circle. In May 1893 he 
became Superintendent of the Indian Museum and Professor 
of Zoology at the Medical College ; from June 1895 to Janu¬ 
ary 1896 he was on special duty with the Pamir Commission. 
He retired from the Indian Medical Service and the superin- 
tendentship of the Museum on December 29th, 1907 and was 
succeeded in the latter by Dr. N. Annandale, the present 
superintendent. 
Colonel Alcock’s connection with the Indian Museum 
may be said to have commenced when he became Surgeon- 
Naturalist on the Indian Marine Survey Ship ^ Investigator.’ 
Year by year in the monsoon season when the ship was laid 
up in Bombay harbour, he came to work in Calcutta on the 
material dredged during the preceding winter, and thus estab¬ 
lished an association with the late Mr. J. Wood-Mason, his 
predecessor as Superintendent, that was fruitful in scientific 
work. On the death of Mr. Wood-Mason his services were 
put at the disposal of the Trustees, and he became Super¬ 
intendent, without, however, leaving the Indian Medical 
Service. 
In the Museum Colonel Alcock made it his aim to work 
out, so far as it was possible for one man to do, the fauna of 
the deeper parts of the Indian seas, to set in order the marine 
collection in the Museum, and to exhibit to the public a judi¬ 
cious selection of the animals identified or described by him¬ 
self and others. The scientific side of this work, in its more 
general aspect, is known to all marine zoologists, being em¬ 
bodied in numerous papers and monographs and in his book 
“ A Naturalist in Indian Seas,” of which there is more to be 
said. It was mainly on account of his monographs on marine 
