132 
THE INDIAN MUSEUM: 1814-1914. 
No. 3. By F. Fedden (1880) {out of print). 
No. 4. Palaeontological collections. By O. Feistmantel. 
No. 5. Economic mineral products. By F. E. Mallet (1883) {out of 
print) 
Guide-books to several of the zoological galleries were 
prepared in Alcock’s time, but all are now out of date, if 
not out of print. The latter fate rapidly befell the excellent 
account of the Invertebrate Gallery written by Alcock him¬ 
self, for the greater part of the whole edition was bought 
up by medical students for use as a text-book. Alterations, 
originating directly or indirectly in the hasty destruction 
of the old Fish Gallery in 1906, have, however, been so con¬ 
tinuously in progress in most of the galleries of recent years 
that there has been no opportunity for the preparation of 
fresh guide-books. In the Invertebrate Gallery this has not 
hitherto been the case so much as in some of the others, and 
Alcockj when he left India, handed over to his successor the 
manuscript, only partially complete, of a new edition of his 
account of that gallery. The individuality of its style, how¬ 
ever, proved a stumbling-block to its actual completion and the 
present superintendent was diffident in rewriting the whole. 
As the gallery is now being entirely rearranged the preparation 
of a new edition must again be postponed. A complete list 
of the official ^ guide-books to the zoological galleries will be 
found at the end of the book in the last appendix. 
Here we may mention an interesting little book, the late 
Rai Bahadur R. B. SanyaFs /‘Hours with Nature” (Cal¬ 
cutta: 1896), in which considerable space is devoted to a 
tour of the zoological galleries of the Museum described in a 
dialogue between a pupil and his teacher somewhat after the 
style of Sandford and Merton”, but with an originality 
and quaintness of its own. The book is of course in no 
sense official. 
Quite recently, indeed since the beginning of 1914, a 
small guide-book to the whole Museum has been published in 
1 For a technical reason the publications of the Trustees do not rank as 
official Government publications. This makes it possible for the Museum to 
issue papers in German, French, Italian or Latin ; for official documents of 
the Government of India must be published either in English or in an Indian 
vernacular. 
