THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE V. VOL. II. 



No. L— JANUARY, 1905. 



OS-IG-IIsrJLXi J^I^TIGXiES. 



I. — Eminent Living Geologists : 



William Thomas Blanford, C.I.E., LL.D., F.E.S., V.P. Zool. Soc, 



Treas. Geo!. Soc. 



(WITH A PORTEAIT, PLATE I.) 



WHAT India has been in the past 300 years to our Army as 

 a nursery in which our soldiers have obtained experience 

 in their profession and earned their promotion, often to the highest 

 rank, such in a lesser degree has it been to many of our geologists, 

 who have, in the past much shorter period of 60 or 60 years, entered 

 the service in this vast field of scientific enterprise, and, aided by 

 a very few amateur geologists in the Army and of civilians attached 

 to other branches of Government employ, have covered many 

 thousand square miles of our Indian Empire with records of their 

 untiring energy in the geological field. 



Among the amateurs may be recorded the names of Generals 

 Sir Eichard Strachey and Sir Proby T. Cautley, Dr. Hugh Falconer, 

 Lieut-Gen. C. A. McMahon ; and as professional geologists. Dr. T. 

 Oldham, H. B. Medlicott, J. G. Medlicott, Dr. Wm. King, Dr. Valentine 

 Ball, the two Blanfords, W. Theobald, E. Bruce Foote, A. B. Wynne, 

 C. L. Griesbach, E. D. Oldham, F. E. Mallet, C. S. Middlemiss, 

 T. D. La Touche, Dr. F. Stoliczka, Professor W. Waagen, the present 

 Director (T. H. Holland), and many others. 



Prominent among the earlier geological workers stand out the 

 names of the brothers W. T. and H. F. Blanford, who joined the 

 Indian Survey together in 1855. Having served on the stafi" for 

 seven years, the younger left in 1862, being appointed to the 

 Educational service, and subsequently as head of the newly con- 

 stituted Meteorological Department for India, a post which he held 

 until 1888, when he retired, and died in 1893 (see notice of his life 

 and work, Geol. Mag., 1893, pp. 191-2). 



William T. Blanford, the surviving brother, and the subject of 

 the present memoir, was born on 7th October, 1832, at 27, Bouverie 

 Street, Whitefriars, in the City of London. The house and manu- 

 factory adjoining it belonged to his father, William Blanford, the 



DECADE V. VOL. II. NO. I. 1 



