51 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 



Bv the death of Colonel Kichard Henry Beddome, F.L.S., this Society 

 has lost one of its original members. As a conchologist he was 

 particularly distinguished among those who collected in Peninsular 

 India. For twenty-five years he was in the Forest Department, 

 having been appointed to it in 1857 by Dr. Cleghorn, Conservator, 

 Captain Beddome being his chief assistant, and for twenty-two years 

 he was the superintendent. His departmental tours gave him 

 splendid opportunities for collecting in many branches of Natural 

 History in the then little-known hill ranges and forests of Central 

 and Southern India, opportunities of which he took the fullest 

 advantage, as shown by the number of new species he discovered, 

 not only of the land moUusca but of mammals and reptiles, and by 

 valuable notes respecting their geographical distribution, whicli led to 

 association with Dr. W. T. Blanford, Dr. T. C. Jerdon, and many 

 other naturalists working in that part of India. 



Colonel Beddome, however, was essentially a botanist, and in the 

 study of the flora of Southern India he devoted the best days of his 

 life, the result of which was the publication of quite a series of 

 valuable works containing figures of numberless species, the drawings 

 being executed with great fidelity by the native draughtsmen he had 

 trained to the work. 



Some of his botanical publications are as follow : — 



Trees of the Madras Presidency, 1863; Flora Sylvatica fur 

 Southern India, 1869-73; Ferns of Southern India, 1873; Ferns of 

 British India, 1876; Forester'' s Manual of Botany for Southern India, 

 1869-74; Icones Plantarum Indies Orientalis, 1874; Handbook of the 

 Ferns of British India, Ceylon, and the Malay Peninsula, 1883 

 (Supplement, 1892). 



On Beptilia and Batrachians he wrote no less than fifteen papers, 

 most valuable contributions to their study. 



The following is a complete list of his papers on Mollusca : — 



1. "Descriptions of some new Operculated Land-shells from Southern India 



and Ceylon," 1875. 



2. " Descriptions of Land-shells from the Island of Koror, Pelew Group," 1889. 



3. "Descriptions of some new Land-shells from the Indian Region," 1891. 



4. " Notes on Indian and Ceylonese species of Glessula,^^ 1906. 



5. "Descriptions of Labijrinthus ciiclausus and Neocyclotus Belli, n.spp., 



from Colombia," 1908. 

 In conjunction with myself — 



6. "New species of Cyclophorus and a Spiraculum from the Khasi and Naga 



Hills, Assam." 



Beddome formed a fine collection of land shells from India and 

 other parts of the worhl, among which the operculates, especially the 

 minute forms, were, I think, his favourites. 



I feel this notice is late in its appearance, but had it come out 

 earlier I could not have put on record, which I do with considerable 

 pleasure, and it will I am sure be shared by the fellows of this 

 Society, that all the Indian types and rarer Indian species in the 



