§ COLONEL SYKESasked the Under Secretary of State for India, When the zoological collections in the India Office Museum will be accessible to zoologists, as it contains types which the progress of zoology renders it desirable to consult; and, when the next sheet of the Indian Atlas will be published, some years having elapsed since the last sheet appeared?
MR. GRANT DUFFIn reply to my hon. and gallant Friend's first Question, I have to say that the zoological collections belonging to the Secretary of State in Council are, to a certain extent, even now available to men of science, who can readily obtain permission to examine them. They examine them, however, I am sorry to say, under great difficulties, and difficulties of which I do not see the end; for even if the Secretary of State 1981 in Council were to erect on his property in Charles Street, as he has sometimes been advised to do, a building more worthy to contain the great museum and library which he possesses than the garrets in which they are now stowed away, nearly the whole available space would be occupied by those Indian productions which it is important to bring under the notice of the commercial classes in this country, and pure science would, I fear, come off very badly. In reply to my hon. and gallant Friend's second question, I have to say that the last sheets of the Indian Atlas—or, rather, quarter sheets, seven in number—were published on the 7th of September, 1870, and that another sheet (No. 114), one-half of which is new matter, will be published to-morrow.
§ COLONEL SYKESasked, Whether the zoological collections were not really boxed up?