The Zoological Collections in the India House

Abstract

PERMIT me to offer my testimony in general support of the view taken by P. L S., in the able article which appeared in your last number. Rather more than a year ago it was a matter of importance for me to examine the type of Horsfield's Turdus varius, contained in the Museum of the Old East India Company. I applied in the proper quarter for leave to examine the specimen, but received a polite answer informing me that it was inaccessible. The official statement therefore said to have been made in the House of Commons on March 14, 1871, by the Under-Secretary of State for India, as to the collections being still “available to men of science” is untrue, and I trust that some member of Parliament will not allow this subject to be lost sight of, but, by continually recurring to it, compel the Administration to open their valuable Museum to the public—its owners. To the two solutions of the difficulty suggested by P.L.S., allow me to add a third. If neither the authorities at South Kensington nor in Great Russell Street can properly exhibit the East India Museum, let it be transferred (of course under suitable guarantee), to some other National Institution.