1855.] Linnean Society. 415 



John Ridout, Esq., was a successful general practitioner in medicine. 

 He was admitted a Member of the Society of Apothecaries in 1S05, 

 and was afterwards elected into the Board of Examiners, and became 

 in due course Master of the Company. He was elected into the 

 Linnean Society in 1832, and in 1843 was nominated one of the 

 Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons. He was likewise a 

 Fellow and Member of the Senate of the University of London, and 

 one of its Board of Examiners. He died on the 26th of April 

 in the present year, at his residence in Montagu Street, Russell 

 Square. 



George Brettingham Sowerby, Esq., was the second son of James 

 Sowerby, a well-informed naturalist, a distinguished botanical artist, 

 the possessor of a considerable natural-history museum, and an early 

 member of the Linnean Society. His son George was born at his 

 residence, Mead Place, Lambeth, on the 12th of August 1788, was 

 educated at home under private masters, and assisted in the collec- 

 tion and arrangement of the museum, acting also as his father's 

 amanuensis. Until his marriage, which took place in 1811, ento- 

 mology was his favourite study, as is shown by " An Account of a 

 new ScarabcBus, and Observations on two other rare Insects," pub- 

 lished in 1812 in the ' Transactions of the Entomological Society of 

 London ; ' but afterwards, from a persuasion that its pursuit was 

 attended with cruelty, he abandoned it for mineralogy and concho- 

 logy, a knowledge of both of which branches of science, but espe- 

 cially of conchology, he assiduously cultivated with a view to turning 

 it to pecuniary profit. For that purpose he made several journeys 

 on the Continent, going once to Vienna and frequently to Paris, in 

 which city he studied the nomenclature of Lamarck, and made him- 

 self many friends. The knowledge thus acquired enabled him to 

 conduct his business with much profit both to himself and to his 

 customers. It induced him also to speculate largely : in one year 

 he purchased both the celebrated Tankerville collection of shells, 

 and the immense stock of minerals and shells left by Mr. George 

 Humphreys, at the cost together of about ^6000. This specula- 

 tion, however, proved to be ill-timed; for immediately after the con- 

 clusion of his bargain, the import duty on subjects of natural history 

 was repealed, and the market price, of shells especially, fell very 

 considerably in consequence of the large numbers imported. He 

 became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1811, and in 1818 com- 

 municated a paper, entitled " Remarks on the genera Orbicula and 

 Crania of Lamarck, with descriptions of two species of each genus, 

 and some observations proving the Patella distorta of Montagu to 



