T. PETCH, B.A., B.Sc. (Lond.). 



MR. T. PETCH, the subject of the present sketch, 

 is an out and out East Riding Yorkshireman, proud 

 of the fact, for he first saw the light at Hornsea on 

 the Holderness coast some thirty-four years ago. His 

 boyhood schooldays were passed in the old choir school 

 of Holy Trinity, Hull. Later he became a teacher in 

 the King's Lynn Grammar School, where he first got in 

 touch with Dr. Plowright of Micro-Fungi fame. In the 

 meantime Mr. Petch had graduated in Arts at London 

 University, and afterwards as Bachelor of Science of the 

 same University. An all round man in classics, mathematics, 

 and natural science, his strongest proclivities, nevertheless, are 

 towards the last ; or, at least, it may be said that it is the 

 absorbing passion of his vacation and other leisure time. 

 King's Lynn formerly, and Leyton Technical Institute of late, 

 may have claimed, and doubtlessly received, Mr. Petch's 

 best daily work, but no sooner had the schools "broken 

 up" than the mathematical and science master hastened 

 northward to the maternal roof at Hedon, the old brick built 

 town with its fine dominating Church of St. Augustine, over- 

 looking the restless tide of the Humber, of which indeed the 

 town was once a port. The mud deposited by this same tide 

 has removed that status from Hedon, but has made new land 

 of the muddy foreshore, every yard of which from Hedon 

 Haven via Cherrycob Sands, Stone Creek, Sunk Island to 

 Spurn, is familiar ground to Mr. Petch. The foreshore, and 

 also the neighbouring sea coast from Spurn northward to 

 Filey, have for years found in him their most ardent and 

 devoted searcher and observer. Thus it is scarcely to be 

 wondered at that his contribution to natural history journals 

 and proceedings has been so extensive. No one has written 

 more fully and with greater interest on such topics as the 

 "Land and Freshwater Mollusca of Holderness," "The 

 Marine Fauna of the Humber District," " Paludestrina 

 jenkinsi" &c. (see "The Naturalist" and the "Transactions 

 of this Club " for the years 1900 to 1904). Amongst 

 Zoologists Mr. Petch was the first to announce the discovery 

 in East Yorkshire of Vertigo mimitissima, a tiny mollusc 

 inhabiting Kilnsea Warren ; for Yorkshire Limapontia 

 depressa, a black sea-slug, and Farella repens, a polyzoon 

 from the Humber, together with undetermined varieties of 



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