248 Notes and Comments. 
and precise, lose nothing of force from the wit that ever enlivens 
them. Engaged in youth in the clerical work of a great 
railway administration, he yet early won distinction in the 
investigation of the traces of the Ice Age that are so amply 
displayed in this great county. His versatile mind now finds. 
scope for wider activities in the control of three splendid 
museums in the city of Kingston-upon-Hull. Not content 
with the exacting demands such a post makes on his strength 
and energy, he added to them for many years the arduous 
duties of Secretary to the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union. His 
eminent services in this capacity received the recognition of 
election to the presidential chair, which he occupied at the 
annual meeting held within the walls of this University last 
December. As editor of The Naturalist, now and for many 
years he has led that journal on a career of steadily widening 
influence. The range of his original work in geology is wide, 
and its penetration deep. Possessing the pen of a ready 
writer, his books have had a notable effect in awakening and 
maintaining interest in his favourite studies. 
JOHN WILLIAM TAYLOR. 
John William Taylor is one of our greatest living authorities. 
on the Land and Fresh Water Mollusca. He founded, and 
edited for many years, the ‘ Journal of Conchology,’ and con- 
tributed to it numerous papers of importance. His ‘ Mono- 
graph on the Land and Fresh Water Mollusca of the British 
Isles,’ on which he has been engaged for many years, is, perhaps, 
the best and most scientific work on this branch of science, 
as it certainly is the most comprehensive. It has been received 
with the most cordial appreciation by naturalists all over the 
world, who speak in the highest terms of praise of its extensive 
and exact learning, its scientific insight, and the beauty of its 
illustrations. In the preparation of this work Mr. Taylor’s 
observations and experience led him to generalisations on the 
centre of distribution of life in all forms, and to the formulation 
of an original hypothesis which seems to give a new clue to 
the right understanding of problems of the distribution of both 
animal and vegetable life. This was elaborated in an address 
delivered to the International Entomological Congress at 
Oxford, and was later taken as the basis of his Presidential 
Address to the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union. Mr. Taylor’s 
Monograph is still unfinished. The University of Leeds offers 
him its congratulations on the large portions already published 
and a sincere hope that, in spite of his threescore years and ten, 
he may enjoy health and strength to complete the great under- 
taking to which the leisure hours of his busy life have been so 
successfully devoted. 
- 
Naturalist, 
