106 Addvess to the Lincolnshive Naturalists’ Union. 
Of these three it is Lister who is associated with the 
Mollusca of Lincolnshire, of which he was the first investigator 
and describer. For the full account of his life and work we may 
refer to the excellent paper published by Mr. Richard W. 
Goulding in 1goo, in the 25th volume of the Associated Archi- 
tectural Societies’ Reports. It must suffice us to state that he 
was born in 1638, that he lived to 1712, when he died at the age 
of 74, that he came of a Yorkshire family of the Craven district, 
that in 1641 when he was three years old the Burwell estate came 
into the possession of the Lister family, in which it remained for 
two centuries until 1883, and that Dr. Martin Lister settled in 
York about 1670 and removed to London in 1683, so that his 
direct connection with Burwell can only have been a few years 
in duration. A man of great ability and capacious intellect, his 
indefatigable energy led him to the investigation of various 
scientific topics. He was the author of 19 separately printed 
books and of about 72 papers in the Philosophical Transactions 
of the Royal Society. He early recognized the character of 
fossils and was disposed to believe that they were the petrified 
remains of former living objects. He was also the first to 
propose the construction of geological maps, in his ‘* Ingenious 
Proposal for a new sort of Maps of Countrys, together with 
tables of Sands and Clays, such chiefly as are found in the north 
parts of England,’ so that, as he went on to say, ‘‘ we shall be 
better able to judge of the make of the earth, and of many 
phenomena belonging thereto, when we have well and duly 
examined it, as far as human art can possibly reach, beginning 
from the outside downwards.’’ His scientific papers included 
some on the circulation of saps, veins in plants, the nature and 
differences of the juices of plants, observations on the gossamer 
spiders observed by him on the towers of York Minster, on 
galls, which he called vegetable excrescences, and insects 
generated in them, viviparity in flies, the true way of making 
steel, the electrical power of stones, the cause of earthquakes 
aud volcanoes, the cause of lightning and thunder, sea water 
made fresh, to mention but a few. 
But it is as a conchologist, or more correctly speaking a 
malacologist, that Martin Lister was at his highest level. His 
