XXV11 



WILLIAM THOMAS BLANFOBD, 1832—1905. 



William Thomas Blanford, though much of his working life was spent 

 out of his native land, began and ended his days in London. He was born 

 on October 7, 1832, at 27, Bouverie Street, in a house which, with the 

 adjoining manufactory, had been built by his father, William Blanford, the 

 site being now occupied by part of the offices of the Daily News. 



From private schools at Brighton he went, at the age of 14, to one in Paris, 

 and there had a serious illness, probably diphtheria, just at the time of the 

 revolution of 1848. On leaving school he spent two years at Civita Vecchia 

 in a mercantile house, and on his return to England, in 1851, joined his 

 father's business. But his younger brother, Henry F. Blanford, afterwards 

 the well-known meteorologist, and a Fellow of this Society, had already 

 become a student at the Boyal School of Mines, and the elder one before long 

 yielded to the same attraction, and commenced his studies there in 1852. 

 During the vacations they worked at field geology with Bamsay (afterwards 

 Sir Andrew) in Wales, and mining, with Smyth (afterwards Sir Warington), 

 in Cornwall. Each passed out head of the list for his year, obtaining the 

 Duke of Cornwall and the Council Scholarships. 



W. T. Blanford, on leaving the school in 1854, continued his studies at 

 Freiberg in Saxony, but next year both brothers were offered and accepted 

 posts on the staff of the Geological Survey of India, then in charge of 

 Dr. Thomas Oldham, arriving in Calcutta at the end of September. 



Early in 1856 they, with an older officer, were sent to examine a coalfield 

 near Talchir, in the province of Orissa, south-west of Calcutta. The results 

 were important, though the coal was of little value, for they were able to 

 distinguish the measures containing it — afterwards called the Damuda series 

 — from an upper group which they named the Mahadeva and a lower one, the 

 Talchir, all forming part of the Gondwana system now familiar to geologists. 

 They also found that the Talchir group contained boulders sometimes 4 or 

 5 yards in diameter, embedded in a fine silt with smaller stones, facetted and 

 striated, which, they suggested, must have been transported by ice. For 

 some time the idea of a glacial epoch in late Carboniferous or early Permian 

 times was not received with favour, but it has since received ample con- 

 firmation.* 



Afterwards Blanford visited Darjiling, and helped in surveying the 

 Bajmahal Hills, having a narrow escape from a band of mutineers on his 

 return to Calcutta, where he joined the Volunteer Cavalry Guards. From 

 the later part of 1857 to 1860 he was engaged in resurveying the Baniganj 



* The subject was fully discussed in W. T. Blanford's address to the Geological 

 Section of the British Association at Montreal in 1884. 



