William Thomas Blanford

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox scientist William Thomas Blanford Template:Postnominals (7 October 1832Template:Snd23 June 1905) was an English geologist and naturalist.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> He is best remembered as the editor of a major series on The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma.<ref name=holland>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Biography

Blanford was born in London to William Blanford and Elizabeth Simpson. His father owned a factory next to their house on Bouverie street, Whitefriars. He was educated in private schools in Brighton (until 1846) and Paris (1848). He joined his family business in carving and gilding and studied at the School of Design in Somerset House.<ref name="Moore" /> Suffering from ill health, he spent two years in a business house at Civitavecchia owned by a friend of his father. His initial aim was to enter a mercantile career. On returning to England in 1851 he was induced to enter the newly established Royal School of Mines (now part of Imperial College London), which his younger brother Henry F. Blanford (1834–1893), afterwards head of the Indian Meteorological Department, had already joined.<ref name="EB 1911" /> He studied under Henry De la Beche, Lyon Playfair, Edward Forbes, Ramsay, and Warington Smyth.<ref name="geog">Template:Cite journal</ref> He then spent a year in the mining school (Bergakademie) at Freiberg, Saxony, and towards the close of 1854 both he and his brother obtained posts on the Geological Survey of India. In that service he remained for twenty-seven years, retiring in 1882.<ref name="Moore">Template:Cite ODNB</ref> After his retirement he took up editorship of The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma series.

Portrait

He was engaged in various parts of India, in the Raniganj coalfield, in Bombay, and in the coalfield near Talcher, where boulders considered to have been ice-borne were found in the Talcher strata (Talchir tillite)—a remarkable discovery confirmed by subsequent observations of other geologists in equivalent strata (Permian) elsewhere across Gondwanaland.<ref name="EB 1911"/> Blanford took an interest in the Permo-Triassic Glossopteris flora. He commented on the geological age of this region in his much later address to the British Association in 1884. Between 1857 and 1860 he was involved in a survey of the Rajniganj coalfields, followed by visits to Trichinopoly and the Nilgiri Hills.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1860 he went to Burma to study an extinct volcano, Puppadoung and in 1862 he took an interest in the Deccan Traps. In 1867 he joined an expedition to Abyssinia, the results of which were published in Observation on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia (1870). accompanying the army to Magdala and back; and in 1871–1872 he was appointed a member of the Persian Boundary Commission<ref name="EB 1911"/> along with O. B. St. John. After a voyage to Basra he started back from Gwadar, 200 miles west of Karachi. He marched to Shiraz with St. John's party and then travelled alone through Ispahan to Teheran to join Sir Richard Pollock. He visited the Elbruz Mountains and returned to England from the Caspian via Astrakhan, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Berlin to reach home in September 1872.<ref name="Moore" /> The best use was made of the exceptional opportunities of studying the natural history of those countries. He subsequently spent time to produce the report on Zoology. He represented the Indian Government at the meeting of the Geological Congress in Bologna.<ref name="Moore" /><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> His attention was given not only to geology but to zoology, and especially to the land gastropods and to the vertebrates.<ref name="EB 1911"/> He joined H J Elwes on a journey to Sikkim in 1870 during which several new bird species were described. Between 1870 and 1881 Blanford described 36 new species of reptiles<ref>"Blanford". The Reptile Database. www.reptile-database.org.</ref> and three new species of amphibians.<ref>"Blanford". Amphibian Species of the World 5.6, an Online Reference. research.amnh.org/vz/herpetology/amphibia.</ref>

In 1883 he married Ida Gertrude Bellhouse,<ref>Ida Gertrude Bellhouse was a daughter of Richard Taylor Bellhouse (1825–1906), who was one of four sons of David Bellhouse, Jr. (1792–1866). (See Chapter 3 of David R. Bellhouse's family history.)</ref> and settled at Bedford Gardens, Campden Hill.<ref name="Moore" />

For his many contributions to geological science, Blanford was in 1883 awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. For his labours on the zoology and geology of British India he received in 1901 a royal medal from the Royal Society. He had been elected F.R.S. in 1874, and was chosen president of the Geological Society in 1888. He was created Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1904.<ref name="EB 1911">{{#if: |

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  }}{{#ifeq:  ||}}</ref> He died at his home at the age of 72 in Bedford Gardens, Campden Hill, in London on 23 June 1905<ref name=holland/><ref name=Moore /> and is buried in a family vault at Highgate Cemetery.

His principal publications were: Observations on the Geology and Zoology of Abyssinia (1870), Manual of the Geology of India, with H. B. Medlicott (1879)<ref name="EB 1911"/> and the third volume in Birds following the work of E. W. Oates in The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma series.

Family vault of William Blanford in Highgate Cemetery (west side)

Bibliography

• 1876: Eastern Persia: An Account of the Journeys of the Persian Boundary Commission 1870-71-72, the Zoology and Geology – volume 2
• 1879: A manual of the geology of India – volume 2 – with Henry Benedict Medlicott, Valentine Ball, Frederick Richard Mallet
• 1888: Mammalia
• 1889: Birds – volume 1 – with Eugene William Oates
• 1889: Birds – volume 2 – with Eugene William Oates
• 1889: Birds – volume 3 – with Eugene William Oates
• 1889: Birds – volume 4 – with Eugene William Oates
• 1889: The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Birds, volume 1 with Eugene William Oates
• 1889: The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Birds, volume 2 with Eugene William Oates
• 1889: The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Birds, volume 3 with Eugene William Oates
• Blanford W. T. & Godwin-Austen H. H. 1908: Mollusca. Testacellidae and Zonitidae. The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma.
• 1922: Birds – volume 1 – with Edward Charles Stuart Baker and with Eugene William Oates

Taxa named in honour

Taxa named in honour of William Thomas Blanford include:

• Blanfordia Template:Small<ref name="Adams 1863">Adams A (1863). "On a new Genus of Terrestrial Mollusks from Japan". Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Third Series 12: 424-425. plate VII, figures 11–12.</ref> – a genus of terrestrial gastropod mollusks in the family Pomatiopsidae
• Calandrella blanfordi Template:Small – Blanford's short-toed lark
• Bunopus blanfordii Template:Small – Blanford's ground gecko<ref name=EDR/>
• Draco blanfordii Template:Small – Blanford's flying lizard<ref name=EDR>Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. Template:ISBN. ("Blanford", p. 27).</ref>
• Acanthodactylus blanfordii Template:Small – Blanford's fringe-fingered lizard<ref name=EDR/>
• Ophiomorus blanfordii Template:Small – Blanford's snake skink<ref name=EDR/>
• Psammophilus blanfordanus Template:Small – Blanford's rock agama<ref name=EDR/>
• Afrotyphlops blanfordii Template:Small – Blanford's blind snake<ref name=EDR/>
• Myriopholis blanfordi Template:Small – Blanford's worm snake<ref name=EDR/>
• Sphaerias blanfordi Template:Small – Blanford's fruit bat<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Vulpes cana Template:Small – Blanford's fox

External links

• Template:Cite DNB12
• portrait and obituary
• Chrono-Biographical Sketch: William T. Blanford
• Eastern Persia: An account of the Journeys of the Persian Boundary Commission