Medical Officers of the Army of India.

47

     According to Sir Clements Markham, the approved authority on this sub-
ject, the renowned Arctic explorers John Davis and William Baffin are also to be
included among Indian marine surveyors.*

     John Davis piloted (1598-1605) three expeditions to this country, of which
the last was fatal to him; for, near the Malacca Straits he fell in with a "Juncke
of the Japons", manned by pirates, by whom he was treacherously murdered.
In the narratives of his eastern voyages several quaint natural history obser
vations are recorded, which show that he and his men possessed that wide
sympathy with other branches of science besides navigation, which has become
traditional with British naval officers.

     William Baffin may properly be called an Indian marine surveyor, for
(1617-1622) he actually made surveys and charts of parts of the Red Sea and
Persian Gulf. His career, like Davis's, was grievously cut short in this part of
the world, for he was killed in action before Ormuz, by the Portuguese,

     From the establishment of the Honourable East India Company, up to the
revival of the present Marine Survey Department in 1874, the history of
surveying in these seas is to be found in a most interesting Memoir on the Indian
Marine Surveys by Sir Clements Markham, printed by order of the House of
Commons in 1871, †to which I am indebted for almost all my facts.

     From the middle of last century, until the establishment of the Indian
Navy in the year 1832, hydrography was carried on as a secondary duty by the
officers of the Bombay Marine, whose explorations not only covered much of
the ground now occupied by the present survey, but also extended to the Red
Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Seas of China. Among the survey vessels of
this period was an old Investigator.

     From 1832 until the abolition of the service in 1862, the Indian Navy
continued the marine surveys, and we now begin to hear of officers of the
Indian Medical Service who utilised the opportunities afforded by service on
board the survey ships to do valuable work in behalf of natural science.
Among the most distinguished of these were Dr. H. J. Carter, F.R.S., a
geologist and naturalist of the widest attainments, who afterwards became one
of the leading authorities on the lower invertebrata, particularly on the Porifera;
and Dr. Theodore Cantor, a vertebrate zoologist, whose works on the mammals
and reptiles, and most of all on the fishes, of the Malayan Peninsula, have
become classical; there are other distinguished names that can hardly be
mentioned in a paper devoted to marine zoology.

     *See C. R. Markham, Voyages of Sir James Lancaster to the East Indies, Dedication and Introduction
(Hakluyt Society, 1877); and Voyages of William Baffin (Hakluyt Society, 1881); also A. H. Markham,
Voyages and Works of John Davis (Hakluyt Society, 1880); from which these facts are taken.

     †See also the same author's Memoir on the Indian Surveys, London, 1871, 2nd edition, 1878.