Born in British Guiana, the son of Edward Henry Dalton, a sugar planter, and later Postmaster of the Colony. He was educated in Brussels, but returned to Guiana before he began to study medicine. There he worked as a dispenser in a drug store in Georgetown and as a dresser in the Colonial Hospital. He entered University College Hospital about 1838, where he was contemporary with John Eric Erichsen (qv). As a student he gained prizes in materia medica and surgery. He practised at Demerara, and was Visiting Surgeon to the hospitals of one or two sugar estates which lay near to Georgetown. While in England in 1864 he passed the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, and when travelling in the United States obtained the degree of MD of the University of Philadelphia. He wrote a treatise on yellow fever, and was the first to recognize the presence of typhoid in British Guiana. While carrying on a large practice in an enervating climate, he wrote a *History of British Guiana* in two large volumes. This work is not merely a history, but deals with the anthropology of the native Indians and with the flora and fauna of the colony. He was particularly interested in insects, and became a corresponding member of the Entomological Society as well as of other learned bodies. He made a fine collection of stuffed birds and small animals, insects, etc., which was, on his death, presented to the Colonial Museum in Georgetown. On receiving the *History of British Guiana*, the King of Portugal sent him a Portuguese Order in recognition of the sympathetic manner in which the author spoke of the Portuguese immigrants to Guiana. Dalton also published a small book of poems entitled *Tropical Lays*. He was an excellent linguist, spoke French, Italian, and Portuguese fluently, and a little Hindustani, Dutch, Spanish, and German. He died in London in February, 1874. He had married his first cousin, and their son, a MD of Edinburgh, practised in British Guiana for many years.