04 rUOCKKDINOS OF TIIK M ALACOLOOICAL SOCIETY. 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 

 PLATE VI. 1 



It is with deep regret that we have to record the loss to this Society 

 of anotlier of its past Presidents. It was only in the early part of last 

 year that we had to mourn the death of Professor G. B. Howes, and 

 now it becomes our sad duty to chronicle that of Dr. W. T. Blanford, 

 CLE., F U.S., etc., who passed away on the 23rd June, 1905, aged 72. 



Already several memoirs of our distinguished President have 

 appeared in various journals; nevertheless, we feel it our duty to give 

 some idea in these ])ages of the work which he accomplished, more 

 especially in connection with the branch of science in which this 

 Society is particularly interested. 



For twenty- seven years Dr. Blanford was engaged on the Geological 

 Survey of India, and published many valuable reports upon the work 

 achieved during that period. Although, while in India, his official 

 duties were in connection with geology, he still had frequent oppor- 

 tunities of paying attention to the zoology of that country. His 

 memoirs treating upon both the vertebrates and invertebrates are 

 numerous and valuable, and indispensable to the student of the Indian 

 fauna. Perhaps no one has been so qualified to write upon the animal 

 life of India as Dr. Blanford, for he possessed, in an exceptional 

 degree, a jireat knowledge of the physical characteristics of the 

 countiy. He had, to a large extent, explored the Indian Peninsula, 

 and thus acquired a great personal acquaintance with the distribution 

 of animal life. The results of this extensive knowledge may be seen 

 in his classic report on "the distrilmtion of vertebrate animals in 

 India, Cejlon, and Burma," published in 1901. 



Dr. Blanford wrote mauy papers on Indian mammals, birds, and 

 reptiles, which ap|)eared in Indian and home journals, and also wrote 

 the account of the mammals and birds in the "Fauna of India," of 

 which he edited the seventeen volumes which have already appeared, 

 and, at the time of his death, he was engaged upon the volumes 

 treating upon the land and fresh-water mollusca. 



Some of the earliest work of Dr. Blanford was in connection with 

 Indian malacology, and from the year 1860 onward a series of about 

 forty valuable papers from his own pen, or in conjunction with his 

 brother, H. F. Blanford, aj)peared in the Journal of the Asiatic 

 fJociety of Bengal, the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 

 the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, the Journal de 

 Conchyliologie, and in the Proceedin<is of this Society. Altogether 

 it is estimated that Dr. Blanford wrote about 400 pages upon Indian 

 Mollusca, besides some account of the fauna of Abyssinia and Persia, 

 a knowledge of which he obtained, from personal observation, whilst 

 accompanying the expeditions under Lord Napier of Magdala, and the \ 

 Persian Boundary Commissicui. 



This portrait, which appeMred in the Geological Magazine, 1905, dec. iv, vol. ii, has 

 beeu very kiudly leut, lor reproduction here, by Dr. Henry Woodward, F.K.S. 



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