THE NAUTILUS. 



Voi,. XVIII. MARCH, 19O5. No. 11 



EDWARD H. ASHMUN. 



Rev. Edward Houghton Ashmun, was horn at Tallmadge, Sum- 

 mit Co., Oliio, March 12, 1S53. Most of liis boyhood was spent 

 there, his father being a farmer. When seventeen he moved 

 with liis father to Weeping Water, Nebraska. As time went on, he 

 became strongly impressed with a desire, to enter the ministry, and 

 toward that end went to Tabor College, at Tabor, Iowa, where he 

 graduated in 1879, and entered the Yale Divinity School, finishing 

 in 1882. He was pastor of the Congregational Church at Syracuse, 

 and Beatrice, Nebraska, after which he was called to the Boulevard 

 Church in Denver, Colorado, which became very prosperous under 

 his ministry. In 1892 he was appointed to the position of Home 

 Missionary Superintendent of Arizona and New Mexico, in which 

 position he remained six years, and then Pastor Superintendent of 

 Arizona for two years, residing at Jerome, Arizona. 



It was during his residence in the southwest that Mr. Ashmun 

 became interested in studying the land shells of that region, and 

 made many rare and interesting discoveries. Collecting in this arid 

 region is laborious and rarely as remunerative as in the more fertile 

 sections. The molluscan fauna is largely confined to the higher 

 mountains, the only situation where there is sufficient moisture for 

 snail life; species are thus widely separated and insulated by the 

 lower and arid wastes, thus presenting as many interesting problems 

 in distribution as exist in true insular faunas. Under the above 

 conditions lives a group of snails, with shells like those of Polygyra, 

 but. anatomically very distinct, and nearer related to Sonorella, 



