122 
THE INDIAN MUSEUM: 1814—1914. 
has attempted, and failed, to complete a work of the kind he 
left unfinished. 
No account of Colonel Alcock’s zoological work in India 
would be complete without some reference to his connection 
with the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the scientific collections 
of which formed the nucleus of the Indian Museum. He 
became a member of this Society in February 1888, was 
elected Natural History Secretary in May 1894, General 
Secretary in April 1895, and Vice-President in February 1901; 
for several years his papers were by far the most important 
contributed to the zoological section of the Society’s Journal, 
and after leaving India he was elected an Honorary Fellow. 
Colonel Alcock worked, so far as his service in India is 
concerned, for his successors rather than himself ; but it is 
fortunately impossible to think that his own work for India is 
finished. We may confidently hope that it will still continue 
for many years in his retirement to bear the fruit of his unsur¬ 
passed accuracy of observation, his many-sided enthusiasm, 
and his literary talent. The admirable organization of his 
office, which enabled his successor to take up the threads of 
routine mechanically, is another matter for which it is im¬ 
possible to be too grateful : although changes necessarily take 
place as the Museum grows and develops, the ground-work 
will always be that constructed by Colonel Alcock, too often 
without recognition and in spite of obstacles of which nothing 
was known beyond the Museum walls. 
Colonel Alcock is now Professor of Entomology in the 
London School of Tropical Medicine. Since leaving India he 
has published a monograph of the freshwater crabs in the 
collection of the Indian Museum, which has already been 
recognized as the necessary basis for future work on the group. 
He has performed an even greater service to tropical zoology, 
more directly connected with his present work, by the pub¬ 
lication of his admirably conceived and remarkably lucid 
text-book ‘‘ Entomology for Medical Officers.” 
A full list of the papers published by Colonel Alcock 
while in India is given in volume II of the Records of the 
Indian Museum, pp. 4—9. 
