CURATORS AND SUPERINTENDENTS. 
121 
zoology that Colonel Alcock was elected a Fellow of the Royal 
Society and received the honorary degree of LL.D. from his 
old University of Aberdeen. The work of arranging and ex¬ 
hibiting the collections of the Museum has naturally a more 
limited renown. There are few Museums, however, which 
can boast that their marine collections are in better order and 
better displayed than is the case in Calcutta—so far, at any 
rate, as the actual specimens are concerned. The gradual 
development which has made it possible to claim for the 
Indian Museum its place among the great reference collec¬ 
tions of the world is largely due to Colonel Alcock’s work in 
this direction. 
He did not, however, confine his attention, while 
connected with the Museum, to marine zoology, as his 
reports on the zoology of the Pamir Commission and on 
the reptiles of the Afghan Frontier Commission of 1895 
and his biological notes in the publications of the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal attest, while the many dissections and 
other preparations he set up in the public galleries of 
reptiles and other terrestrial vertebrates prove his care for 
the interests of the students of the Calcutta Medical College, 
to whom he lectured in disheartening circumstances as 
regards the absence of all opportunity for practical classes 
and the humble place then given to zoology in the Indian 
medical curriculum The Bird and Mammal Galleries are still 
perhaps the least satisfactory parts of the Museum, but one 
man could not bring every section to equal perfection, and 
only those who remember their previous state can appreciate 
what was done to improve them in Colonel Alcock’s time. 
“ The Naturalist in Indian Seas ” (1902) may be regarded 
as an epitome and a popularization (in the best sense of the 
word) of the greater part of Colonel Alcock’s scientific work 
in India. It is a book that owes its value not only to its erudi¬ 
tion and perspicuity but hardly less to its literary style, in 
which the strong infusion of Shakespeare and other Elizabe¬ 
than authors is never pedantic, never frivolous, and never 
dull. The skill with which such apparently incongruous ele¬ 
ments are fused even into the guide-books he prepared for 
the Museum galleries can be fully realized only by one who 
