Page:The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma (Mammalia).djvu/12

iv several of the forms enumerated, now that better series of specimens have been collected, are no longer regarded as distinct.

Some acknowledgment of the assistance afforded to me in the preparation of the present work will be found in the Introduction. To the list of those who have aided in the publication should be added the Trustees of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, to whom I am indebted for the use of the cuts prepared for Dobson's 'Monograph of Asiatic Chiroptera' and for the opportunity of comparing in London some specimens belonging to the Indian Museum, I must also express my particular obligation to Prof. W. H. Flower, Director of the Natural History Collection in the British Museum, for advice and information with regard to the Cetacea; to Mr. R. Lydekker for aid in preparing the account of the Ungulata; to Mr. W. L. Sclater for advance sheets of his Catalogue of Mammalia in the Indian Museum, and for notes on specimens in the Calcutta Collections; and to Mr. Oldfield Thomas, of the British Museum, for assistance and information of every kind, most freely afforded throughout the progress of the work, in connection with the Mammalian Collections under his supervision.

There is another acknowledgment that should perhaps have been made before, but for which the present affords a good occasion. If, as I hope, the present series of works is found useful by Indian naturalists, they will I am sure wish that the names of those who took the first steps in bringing the want of new Handbooks of Indian Zoology to the notice of the Government of India should not remain unrecorded.

The need for new and revised descriptive works had, for some years before 1881, been felt and discussed amongst naturalists in India, but the attention of the Government was, I believe, first called to the matter hy a memorial dated Sept. 15th of that year, prepared by Mr. P. L. Sclater, the well-known Secretary of the Zoological Society, signed by