'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From January 1865 to December 1867. (Edited by the Honorary Secretary.) Volume XVIII.' [‎15] (42/268)

BOMBAY GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.
XV
given to us rather than wait in the short-sighted hope that we might
retain a smaller but more cheerful room a short time longer. You are
now in possession of a room placed at your disposal by Government, to
which no other body has any claim. It is not handsome, but it is your
own ; and I feel confident that whenever you do leave it, it will be for
something better, instead of as I always dreaded when we were in the
other room that we might be ejected without any provision being made
for us. I have dwelt upon this subject because having been at the
time President of both the Societies, both the one that gained the room,
and the other that lost it, and having had the recovery of that room
enumerated as one of the benefits I obtained for that Society, I might
have been thought to have favoured the one at the expense of the
other ; but I am proud to think that I receive honour from both Societies,
and that even those who may not feel inclined to thank me for what
I then did are willing to give me credit for having generally done
my best. But my own exertions in any direction would have
availed but little had I not been supported, as I always have been,
by the Vice-Presidents, Committee, Secretary, and Members generally.
It is to the handsome donations to which you refer that the material
prosperity of the Society is due, and without your support in managing
the Society I must have failed. Long may that prosperity continue
, to Bombay which has enabled her princely merchants to do so much
for the cause of science, and may they live to reap the fruits of their
generosity in seeing the advancement of their countrymen, and the
spread of geographical and every other science. It has been my good
fortune to have been President of your Society in these days of its
prosperity, and I fear that more merit for that prosperity is due to
others than to me. I cannot say more than that I am proud of,
and most readily grant the request you make me, of sitting for my por
trait, and being enrolled among your honorary members. I only wish
I was more worthy of the honour you do me ; to keep my name among
If 1^e s is what I ^^^orild myself have sought ; but to have my
portrait beside Captain Boss, Sir C. Malcolm, and Sir A. Burnes, I
could never have aspired to ; your partial favour alone could have sug
gested it. If it shall happen that I am able to make the journey that I
contemplate, instead of going directly home, and if, in the course of it
I meet with anything that will interest the Society, I shall be happy
to communicate it. And now, thanking you most cordially for your