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British Museum

To Brian Houghton Hodgson

29 Jan 1847

My dear Sir

As we are sending some of the copies of the catalogues I take the opportunity of sending you some letters which have been [waiting?] here. I hope the catalogue will be satisfactory to you, there are some points on which we may differ but such differences elicit truth while easy compliances only perpetuate error. I have just had a visit from Mr. Grace who gave me an account of you. I have looked over his skins he has no Mammalia and only three kinds of Birds not in your collection. Blyth appears to have treated him as he did you as he passed Calcutta. Your skeleton(s) has caused us to go on collecting others and now we have three times as many as they have in the College of Surgeons and nearly as many as they have in Paris except in [?]. We are printing a catalogue of them and your specimens will there appear again as they will in my new catalogue of Mammalia and Birds now in the press. You will see by the catalogue what are the desiderata of Skin and Bones but I shall be very glad to receive good fresh skins of each species and they shall be duly stuffed and [protected?] from London dust [?] soon makes new ones requisite and desirable. I shall send you a list of the Drawings but we have not so many hands here as you have in India and these things take time. I should much like to have the Wild Horse and Ass. What is the Kiang? I shall have a fine work on antelopes for you shortly
Ever yours truly

J.E. Gray

Express overland
B.H. Hodgson Esq
Care of Messrs Coutts & Co
Strand, London

Sept 21 1844
Calcutta

My dear Hodgson

[Maddock?] sent me a few weeks ago an extract from a letter of yours [reverting] to the publication of your Zoological Drawings by Mr. Howard I would gladly do my utmost in furtherance of so desirable an object but as I told Maddock I thought you were in a better position by proximity to artists and publishers to ascertain if at the high rate the drawings must be sold, the subscription could fill and secondly whether the addition of a more obscure name be interested in the progress of the work might not interfere with its success. I did what I could in giving publicity to your prospectus and publishing in the Journal a coloured specimen of your [reduced?[ drawing: I think England and not India is the place to ascertain the two main points noted over page and you will oblige me by letting me know how these stand after enquiring and how you wish me to act. Yours of the 20th July has been sent me by Piddington would you know the arrogance Blyth has given us by disobedience, shuffling and erosion of his duty as we acquire it to be done, you would not wonder at any thing from him, he now says as an excuse for three years delay in editing [B's?] Zoology of the subject on the plates which [?] that he has lost [Dr Ford's?] notes on them! I will see about your papers the man is [deluded?] by that wretched professional English [?] which insists in denying all merit and if possible interfering with all success of any other naturalist more especially one not professional:- the [?] of his finding him has been [?] discussed and I am ready to carry it through for the amount of arrogance I undergo from the jealousy, arrogance smugness and absurd pretentions of all my subordinates in the Society requires a thinking example you shall have by the next mail of the fate of your papers and I hope have copies sent you as desired. Allen & Co have also written good accounts of the progress of the Bust, it's place is empty but the [?] say the vacant pedestal waiting it with impatience at least [?] impatience as that of which [?] I [shall] be proud [?] of having seen these noble busts of great and good names added to our collection in my time [?] Princep, Hodgson: - we are going on in all departments though not exactly straight as in Blyth's and Sir [B] Hardinge will be our President. I trust you enjoy England:- I doubt much if I will see England again. I have played a great game and tried to come in and drew the stakes just as I hoped for success. Let me hear from you, and believe me
Very sincerely
H. Torrens

Calcutt 1st July 1844

Per overland via Southampton

B.H. Hodgson
Care Messrs Coutts & Son
London

PRIVATE

My dear Sir

The enclosed I thought you would like to see and both Torrens and myself are desirous that you should known that we at least are not to blame in this dirty job which is neither more nor less than disgraceful for it at least or best deprived you of the honour of simultaneous discovery and publication. My [notice] was written much fuller and stronger for I detailed all the various untruisms in what Blyth had been [?] by us officialy and [?] of this beautiful plate and specifically that at the wanting to your honour though Sciurop.dx was produced, not a syllable was said by him!
[?] from us again as you will of course send the Sc. we will manage with your contribution as in the case of [?] for i doubt not that though in [?] you will bear us in mind for any thing which may offer to you[r] Zoological, Geolog. or Mineralogy etc. I shall be most happy to [?] to yourself or friends here be assured. We are just bringing our poor Herbert's geol. map of the Himalayas effodiated from the shelves of Leadenhall Street and a very creditable one it is.

Pray believe me very f[aith]f[ully] yours
H. Piddington

X Torrens did not like to be too full less it might appear personal. Pray [?] if the Mag. Nat History Society between 70 and 85 and we known we (Society) are made footstools of it

The Lodge
Tewkesbury
May 23 1845

My dear Sir

I was much obliged by your last communication announcing your very handsome donation to me of 205 specimens of Birds. These will be of the highest interest to me as being original and authentic types of the numerous novelties which you have described in various works. I hope to be in London about the middle of June and to see you then.
Ever yours
very sincerely

H.E. Strickland

To B. H. Hodgson

29 Bury Street
St James
London

June 14th 1845

My dear Sir,

A few days ago Mr J.E. Gray forwarded to me the collection of Nepalese birds which you have so kindly presented to me. They include many species new to my collection, and will be of the utmost service to me in identifying the many new species which you have added to science. I regret very much that your approaching departure for India will deprive me of the pleasure of again seeing you in London, or as I had hoped of shewing you my collection in Oxford. I send you herewith a copy of my Report on ornithology just published, and if it is not giving you too much trouble, perhaps you would kindly take chare a copy for Mr Blyth, whom I presume you will see in Calcutta. Hoping you may be enabled to resume your very interesting researches into Indian Zoology
I am with many thanks
very truly yours
H.E. Strickland

To B.H. Hodgson Esq.

33 Upper Berkeley Street
Portman Square

8 Feb[ruaru]y 1870

My dear Mr. Hodgson

I had a talk with Mr. Grote yesterday about y[ou]r portfolios. What I want to do myself is to send the whole of them as they are to Mr. Hume, as agreed in my brother's care, he sails next months and there they could be sorted, translated and arranged with the greatest convenience and incorporated at once with Humes work; Mr. Grote does not believe in Hume and I was unable to convince him that the book would certainly be published, and in that case he proposed and I assented to, keeping them in abeyance for a short time and having them up one by one to sort and catalogue; but on returning home and again reading over Humes letters (parts of which I enclose) I thought three was sufficient guarantee for the publishing of the work, and that the sending of your portfolios out direct would be a saving of both tie and labour. I have written to Mr. Grote to this effect. I have been hard at work lately and so these has been a little delay in answering you. I feel a little delicacy in proposing the wholesale sending out of your treasures to India but I am convinced of their safety and that it is the greatest opportunity of utilizing them likely to occur, and you have been so kind about them already of course. Everything would appear in your name.
With my Kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Hodgson
Y[our]s very truly

G.F.L. Marshall

To Brian Houghton Hodgson

118 Cambridge Street
Warwick Square
S.W

12th April 1870

My dear Mr. Hodgson

The pamphlet that Hume published has arrived and I send you a copy of it by book-post this day. It contains a great deal of useful information and it is a thorough field ornithologist's handbook, but it requires revision and systematizing and that I hope it will get when published in its complete form. We have had no answers as yet to our letters to him and are anxiously awaiting them. If we are able to induce him to come home for a year so as to combine his immense store of notes from all sources with that already on record in libraries and revise the synonymy it may be made into a most complete work. Mr Grote tells me that you wish to subscribe to our monograph and also to Hume's book. It is very good of you indeed to back us up after you had for so long relinquishes the pursuit and got out of the habit of interesting yourself in birds. I was going through the Journal of Asiatic Society the other day and I was quite overwhelmed with the immense number of your contributions to it on every subject. Are you coming to town this season, I hope so. I should much like my eldest sister to meet you she should thoroughly appreciate so staunch a liberal and especially one from India and she is a great friend of your friends the Colvilles.
Please give my kindest regards to Mrs. Hodgson and believe me

Y[ou]rs very truly

G.F.L. Marshall

18 Cambridge Street
Warwick Square

20th May 1870

My dear Mr Hodgson

I have been a very long time about answering your kind letter of the 26th April and owe you an apology for it but it has been a particularly busy month with as it is one of the few times that I am able to live with my brother and we have naturally lots to do together. About your manuscripts I have had my faith rudely shaken in Hume's illustrated work and if he continues in the present strain I despair of it altogether; that printed letter was like a plunge into cold water. I do not understand it, he has the money and the materials and won't go on and most of all I am disappointed for the loss of the opportunity of utilizing your notes in a form worthy of them I feel that I have disappointed you though not so much as he has disappointed me! You very kindly say that I may make them public in any other way and this I mean to do if you think fit in the following way by publishing the notes in a series of papers in the 'Ibis' a family at a time and with one or two of the most valuable figures [stigle canopus?] and the general anatomical part either in a separate pamphlet6 or in the P.Z.S. and they I think will give me engravings of all the structural plates. This seems to me to the best plan at present and the way in which they will prove of the most value to science as the Ibis has a very wide circulation, but it is a very different thing to what I had hoped when I was with you and to the visions I had in mind of Hume's almost perfect work on ornithology! This of course would be a work of [time?] and even in England I could not get half the leisure I want to do it thoroughly and in India my moments for ornitholo0gy are few and far between and I should like to have Mr. Grote's opinion to whether I should be justified i taking to India the parts not worked out before I left England. If you approve of this I will set to work at it will a will and if Hume wants to bring out his 'great work' at any future time he can quote those from the Ibis as he already quotes largely. I hope when I get at hi in London to bring him to the point but at present I confess I am utterly disheartened with him. Please let me know what you think of this. I think Mr. Grote is with you now. I heard from [Lincolnshire?] that Mr and Mrs Colville are staying with you if so please remember me kindly to them. I leave town on the [first?] of June I am going to the north of Ireland. Please give my kindest regards to Mrs Hodgson and believe me Ever Yours Very Sincerely
G.F.L. Marshall

P.S. We have received your cheque for the [?]. I sent a receipt, it was very kind of you to pay up in advance, we are getting on fast and suspect the whole nine numbers to be out next Spring. Your notes are the only ones of real value in the book

To Brian Houghton Hodgson

118 Cambridge St
Warwick Square
S.W.

27th April 1870

My dear Mr Hodgson

I enclose a printed letter of Hume's and his last to me about the book from which you may be able to judge of his intentions. He writes in a depressed tone about the overwork and really it does seem a hopeless business and as far as I can judge the illustrated work will now remain in abeyance for a time, I do not think Jerdon will take it up and Hume will probably take furlough soon and then the requisite leisure will be found. I do not know what to do about your portfolios in the mean time; I can during the Summer arrange and systematize The Notes but I do not see how to utilize the figures except for identification by myself of the species and it seems such a pity that they should be hid. I fear it will be no use sending them to Hume till he is more at leisure, but having the notes arranged will be the chief point. and they can then be incorporated at [pleasure?]. Joseph Hume was this man's father, not uncle. What you say about our plates is quite true, they are harsh, but Wolf will not draw and I know of no better artist than than we have got who will undertake such work.

With Kindest Regards to Mrs Hodgson
believe me
Ever Yrs Sincerely
G.F.L. Marshall

Natural History Museum
March 13th 1860

Dear Sir,

In answer to your letter of the 7th inst. I have much pleasure in forwarding, in accordance with your wishes, the enclosed List of Birds which you discovered in Nepal since 1844 together with the corrected names of some of those previously sent. The species pertaining to the Rasorial, Grallatorial and Natatorial groups I have not as yet worked out (but which I hope to do at some future time) the names of these in the list are upon the authority of Mr. G. R. Gray. I hope it will answer your purpose. I believe I mentioned when you were last here, that a change would probably take place in regard to our Natural History Museum - and that I was anxious to obtain testimonials regarding my fitness for taking charge, as Curator, of this Collection. I therefore take this opportunity of soliciting the favour of one from yourself, which, with your kind permission I should be grateful to possess as soon as conveniently possible. Trusting that you will pardon the liberty and believe me

Your most obediently
Frederic Moore

P.S. For your information I may be allowed the liberty of stating that I acted as assistant to the late Doctor H. for 12 years, conducting the necessary duties of the Dept.