Che Woliusca of Somerset. 
BY E. W. SWANTON, 
Member of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 
INTRODUCTION. 
HE earliest reference to the shells of Somerset with which 
I am acquainted is that given by Emmanuel Mendes da 
Costa in his Historia Naturalis Testaceorum Britannie (1778), 
wherein that most assiduous collector remarks concerning 
H. lapicida, “I have found them on the rocks at and near 
Matlock in Derbyshire ; about Bath in Somersetshire, also on 
rocks ; in Surrey, Wiltshire, and Hampshire, in the moss on 
the bodies of large trees, and in woods.” 
It is a matter of regret that no well-known conchologist 
resided in Somerset in the XVIII Century. The adjacent 
counties of Wilts, Dorset, and Devon were more fortunate in 
this respect. Colonel Montagu, F.L.s., the author of the well- 
known V'estacea Britannica, was born at Lackham in Wilts, 
in 1755. He studied very closely the mollusca of the northern 
part of that county before removing to Kingsbridge in Devon, 
where he devoted the remainder of his life to an investigation 
of the ornithology and conchology of South Devon. His 
contemporary was Dr. Pulteney, who published, in 1799, a 
catalogue of birds, shells, etc., of the county of Dorset. 
In 1822, Mr. J. S. Miller published in the Annals of 
Philosophy a list of land and freshwater shells occurring in 
the environs of Bristol, but it was not until the middle of the 
B 
