Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/198

 had restricted powers of municipal administration, and when a municipal corporation at Bombay was established in 1872 he was one of the original members, retaining office until his retirement from public life. He was elected to the chair on four occasions between 1877 and 1893. A member of the municipality's statutory standing committee responsible for the civic expenditure for nine years, and its chairman from 1890 to 1894, he refused the fees payable for attendance, and thus saved the rates about 1000l. An eloquent speaker and an ardent but always fair fighter, he exercised a wise and salutary influence on civic polity. He successfully resisted the efforts of a powerful English syndicate to obtain control of the water supply, the adequacy and efficiency of which under municipal management were his special care. He was chairman of the joint schools committee, a member of the city improvement trust, and a fellow of the university. The government of India appointed him sheriff of Bombay in 1875 and 1888. He was created a C.I.E. in May 1894, and on 2 June of the same year a statue of him in Carrara marble, by Signor Valla of Genoa, for which upwards of Rs. 22,000 (1460l.) were subscribed by his fellow-citizens, was unveiled, opposite the Bombay municipal buildings, by Mr. H. A. Acworth, I.C.S., then municipal commissioner. Four years later the infirmities of age compelled Blaney's relinquishment of both civic and professional work. His liberality had deprived him of means of support, but a few fellow-townsmen provided for his simple needs. He died unmarried on 1 April 1903, and was buried at Sewri cemetery next day.



BLANFORD, WILLIAM THOMAS (1832–1905), geologist and zoologist, born on 7 Oct. 1832 at 27 Bouverie Street, London, was eldest of four sons of William Blanford by his wife, Elizabeth Simpson; [q. v. Suppl. I] was a younger brother. At fourteen he left a private school at Brighton for Paris, where he remained till March 1848. After a serious illness he spent two years in a mercantile house at Civita Vecchia, returning to England in 1851, when he joined his father's business of carver and guilder, studying at the school of design, Somerset House. Next year he followed his brother Henry to the Royal School of Mines, gaining at the end of the two years' course the duke of Cornwall's and the council's scholarships. In 1854 he studied at the mining school of Freiberg in Saxony, and late in the autumn both brothers left England for India with appointments on its geological survey.

Their first work was to examine a coalfield near Talchir, about 60 miles N.W. of Cuttack in Orissa. The chief results were the separation of the coal measures into an upper and lower division and the discovery of boulders in the fine silt of the Talchir strata which Blanford rightly concluded bore marks of ice action. At the outbreak of the mutiny he was busy surveying, and had a narrow escape, in returning to Calcutta where he joined the volunteer guards. The danger ended, he resumed work in the field, and was engaged in 18589 on the Rariganj coalfield. After November 1860 he spent two years in investigating the geology of Burma, discovering an extinct volcano near Pagan, and making extensive zoological collections.

In November 1862, on returning from leave in England, he was raised to the post of deputy superintendent, and employed during the next four years in the survey of the Bombay presidency, determining among other things the age of the Deccan traps. Late in 1867 he was attached to the Abyssinian expedition and accompanied the troops to Magdala, making large collections, both geological and zoological. Work on these occupied much time after his return to India in October 1868, and brought him to England on six months' service leave; the outcome was his valuable book, 'Observations on the Geology and the Zoology of Abyssinia' (1870).

He resumed field work in India, and by the end of the season of 1871 had traversed nearly the whole peninsula on foot or horseback. Attached to the Persian Boundary commission, he went to Teheran, visited the Elburz Mountains, and returned to England from the Caspian by Moscow, arriving home in September 1872. The hardships of this expedition affected his health, and during two years' enforced leave he prepared a volume for the report of the boundary commission (published in 1876). Some important work on the geology of Sind was done after his return to India in 1874, but his time was chiefly occupied by office duties in Calcutta. Here he joined with his chief, [q. v. Suppl. II], in writing a 'Manual of the Geology of India' (1879), fully one-half of which was 