OBITUARY NOTICES.
41
to them here, other than to say that a full account of the Commemoration
will appear in the Essex Naturalist in due course.
During the past year steady progress has been made in all departments
of the Club's work. In the Library 82 further volumes have been bound
and the total number of bound volumes on the shelves now reaches 5,900,
while in addition we possess some 2,400 pamphlets on various scientific
and antiquarian subjects.
Further additions have also been made, by the kindness of many
donors, to the Pictorial Survey collection, which now comprises some 6,700
Essex photographs and prints.
The routine work of both our museums has proceeded uninterruptedly
and some valuable accessions have been made during the past year.
The Essex Naturalist has appeared at the usual regular intervals;
its twenty-second volume is now completed.
Fifteen meetings of the Club have been held since our last Annual
Meeting, and attendances have been uniformly good and the interest of
members maintained.
The Council takes this opportunity to record its grateful thanks
to all members and friends who have, in one way or another, contributed
to these satisfactory results.
OBITUARY NOTICES.
WILLIAM HERBERT DALTON. (1848—1929.)
The decease of one of the Club's older honorary members, W. H.
Dalton, F.G.S., on September 18th, 1929, at the ripe old age of 81 years,
leaves one more gap in the number of our early adherents, now with the
passage of the years become so small. At one time a constant attendant
at our meetings, of late years he has passed out of the knowledge of most
of our members and only a comparative few of the older ones have remem-
brance of him.
William Herbert Dalton was son of a former rector of Fowlness,
the Rev. Samuel Neale Dalton, and was born on that island on July 16th,
1848. From his earliest years he evinced a keen interest in all branches
of natural history, so that when, at age 21, he secured an appointment on
the staff of the Geological Survey, he was already well equipped, theore-
tically, with knowledge for his post.
But ill-health caused him to relinquish this appointment after only
seventeen years' service and in the eighties he retired. His activities were,
however, far from being ended: he became a Consulting Geologist, and in
particular took up energetically the subject of petroleum. In pursuit of
detailed knowledge of its mode of occurrence he travelled widely—to
California, South Africa, Burma, Siberia, Japan and elsewhere. As a
result of this intensive study of the subject, he produced, in collaboration
with Sir Boverton Redwood, a Treatise on Petroleum, in three volumes,
which became a standard work.
For many years he was occupied in compiling a Bibliography of Petro-
leum Literature, and was an acknowledged expert on the subject.
The Journal of the Institution of Petroleum Technologists acclaims