72 



OBITUARY NOTICE. 

 G. W. CHASTER, M.R.C.S,, L.R.C.P. 



By EDWARD COLLIER. 



CoNCHOLOGY has suffered a very great loss by the death of my old 

 friend, Dr. G. W. Chaster, which occurred on Thursday morning, 

 May 5th, at his residence, 42, Talbot Street, Southport, after a very 

 short illness, at the early age of 47. 



Dr. Chaster was the son of Mr. G. "W. Chaster, of Wigan, who 

 removed to Southport when his son was still very young. He 

 received his training at University College, Liverpool, where he 

 had a very successful career. He was Jones scholar m 1882, and 

 took the Bronze Medal for Anatomy and Physiology in June of that 

 year. In 1883 he became Torr Gold Medallist, and in 1885 was 

 appointed assistant demonstrator in Physiology at the University. In 

 1886, he took the Bronze Medal for Histology, and the Silver 

 Medal for Pathology in 1887. In 1889 he won the Holt Tutorial 

 Scholarship, and became assistant demonstrator in Anatomy, and 

 clinical assistant at the Liverpool Royal Infirmary. In 1896 Dr. 

 Chaster was appointed honorary assistant on the medical staff of the 

 Southport Infirmary. In 1903 he was appointed one of the honorary 

 medical officers, and fulfilled the duties attached to this office until 

 the year 1907, when he had a very serious illness, and retired, but 

 was appointed consulting medical officer to the Infirmary, which 

 position he retained to the time of his death. 



Dr. Chaster, all his life, was a student of Natural History, and 

 other scientific subjects. He was a keen conchologist and collected 

 largely, not only land and freshwater shells, but marine as well, es- 

 pecially the smaller ones, on which he was a great authority. He 

 was also a very good coleopterist, and had a large collection. He 

 joined the Conchological Society as a member in 1895, and was 

 President in 1904-5 and 1905-6, when he gave a presidential address 

 on "Species and Variation," which he treated in a thorough, scientific 

 manner. He was one of the committee appointed in 1902 by the 

 Council of the Conchological Society to prepare a " List of the 

 British Marine Mollusca and Brachiopoda," and spared no pains to 

 bring the part entrusted to him thoroughly up to date in classification 

 and nomenclature. 



He contributed many papers and short notes to the Journal of the 

 Society, including : " Shell hunting in Merionethshire," " A con- 

 tribution towards a list of the Marine Mollusca and Brachiopoda of 

 the neighbourhood of Oban," " On the occurrence of Pulselluin 



