260 
OBITUARY. 
It is with great regret that we announce the death which took place in 
Bombay on the 9th October 1921 of Mr. John Wallace, C.E., who joined the 
Bombay Natural History Society as a member in 1891 and who was elected 
a member of the Committee of the Society in 1901, a position he occupied 
until his death. 
Educated at King’s College, London, Mr. Wallace worked for some years in 
important engineering firms at home and gained a thorough experience of machin- 
ery of all kinds. He subsequently went to Cairo as Chief Engineer of the Egypt- 
ian Railways. During the Egyptian Expedition of 1882, he volunteered his 
services to the Military authorities and was appointed by Lord Charles Beresford 
Chief of the Fire Brigade during the burning of Alexandria when his knowledge 
of local conditions and familiarity with fire appliances proved of great value to 
the Military authorities. or his services he received the Silver Medal and Bronze 
Star of the Egyptian Expedition of 1882 and the Order of the Mejidieh from the 
Egyptian Government, 
In 1886 Mr. Wallace came to India and after designing the water works at 
Cawnpore and mill buildings at Aurungabad, Gadag and Ahmedabad settled 
down as an Engineer in Bombay and since 1893 was joint Editor of the Indian 
Textile Journal. 
Mr. Wallace specially devoted himself to the designing and making of the 
simpler and cheaper appliances for handicrafts suitable for the average Indian 
workman, and in this connection he rendered valuable services to the workshops 
of the School of Arts in Bombay which he improved and remodelled considerably 
while serving as Acting Principal in place of Mr. Cecil Burns. 
In this connection however he will perhaps best be remembered as the inventor 
and prime-mover in the idea which has developed into a flourishing little industry, 
namely, the teaching of women to make beads out of the hard and various colour- 
ed seeds which ordinarily fall ungathered in the jungles, and to make up these 
beads into chicks, necklaces, curtain loops, hat-pins and many other ornamental 
articles for which a good demand might be expected. 
The seeds most suited to this purpose being very hard and of irregular shape 
and size, it was by no means easy to devise an apparatus for drilling them which 
should be both cheap, simple and efficient, but after a good deal of experiment a 
drilling machine was evolved of the simplest kind—and we may say of the 
cheapest as it was made from an old packing case! Its efficiency was proved 
by the fact that work came in too fast for it, and it was supplemented by a 
long table furnished with six drill heads, the whole of which are driven by 
one cord, a coolie providing motive power. 
Only in India could be found such a rich variety of seeds, brown, black, 
yellow, red, white and olive, suited to the work. The rich brown Gharbi bean 
of the size ot a watch, combines with the Rudraksha nut (sacred to Shiva) in a 
very handsome loop for heavy curtains, and the gul mohr, the scarlet wild 
liquorice, wild grass, acacia, soapnut, cana, moonflower, Lushai bean, Singara, 
gall nut, fever nut and many others are worked up into a series of beautiful 
articles which received their full share of appreciation in the Forest Depart- 
ment of the Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition held in 1904 on the Oval 
at Bombay. 
The Mother Superior of the All Saints Home at Mazagaon, where the industry was 
established, writing to the Honorary Secretary of the Society after Mr. Wallace’s 
death, said “ All through—and up to within a few days of his death, he showed 
the greatest interest in its development—he was constantly suggesting new 
