Vol. 67.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. lvil 



He was appointed an Inspector of Mines in 1874, and was pro- 

 moted to be Chief Inspector in the Midland District in 1887. 

 During this period he on several occasions performed acts of great 

 bravery in the rescue of men entombed in mines. In 1879 the 

 Silver Medal of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem was awarded 

 to him, and in 1882 the Albert Medal of the First Class. He 

 joined this Society in 1874, and in 1880 published his only paper 

 in the Quarterly Journal, ' On the Coal found at Siideroe in the 

 Faroe Islands.' He made numerous important contributions to 

 mining journals on lead -mining, safety -lamps, and economic 

 geology, and wrote a history and geology of Castleton. He died 

 at Derby on November 10th, 1910, in his 68th year. 



William Phipps Blake was born in Xew York [on June 1st, 

 1826, and received his scientific education at the University of 

 Yale, from which he graduated in 1852, among his co-graduates 

 being Prof. Brush and Prof. Brewer. From 1854 to 1856 he acted 

 as Geologist and Mineralogist on the explorations for the proposed 

 Pacific Railway, reaching California shortly after the discovery of 

 gold there. He carried on mining explorations in North Carolina 

 and Georgia in 1860, and from 1861 to 1863 was employed by the 

 Imperial Government of Japan in an examination of the mineral 

 resources of that country. He also visited Alaska in 1867. In 

 1864 he became Professor of Geology and Mineralogy in the 

 College of California, and, later, he was appointed Professor of 

 Geology and Director of the School of Mines at the University of 

 Arizona, being made Emeritus Professor in 1895. He was also* 

 for some years, Territorial Geologist of Arizona. 



He joined the Geological Society in 1876, and remained a Fellow 

 until his death on May 22nd, 1910. His earlier papers were 

 devoted to mineralogy, a subject in which he maintained his 

 interest up to the end of his life. Other subjects on which he wrote 

 comprise infusorial earths; deserts and the action of [the sand- 

 blast ; the mammoth, tapir, Hipparion, and other mammals ; the 

 ores of gold, silver, iron, mercury, and tin ; the Rocky Mountains, 

 California, Arizona, Oregon, and Wisconsin; coal, glaciation, 

 earthquakes, and oscillations of level ; and he even contributed 

 a paper on the Pliocene skull of California. He was also the 

 author of a volume on ' The Production of the Precious Metals V 



1 Taken in part from Aui. Journ. Sci. ser. 4, vol. xxx (1910) pp. 95-96. 

 vol. lxvii. e 



