137 



THE CONCHOLOGY OF THE CLYDE: GEOGRAPHICAL 

 AND BIOGRAPHICAL. 



(Presidential Address delivered at the Annual Meeting, Sept. 13, igoi). 



By ALEXANDER SOMERVILLE, B.Sc, F.L.S. 



My first duty, on taking the place I do to-night, is to offer personally 

 to the Society my very hearty thanks for what they did a year ago in 

 placing me in the President's chair, conferring on me thereby the 

 highest honour which it is in their power to bestow. Standing before 

 you to-night I truly wish that the distinction were better deserved, 

 for I can claim to have added but little to the literature of concho- 

 logical science. What shall I say in regard to what your kindness 

 has led you to do in continuing my presidentship for a second year ? 

 This only, that I thank you most sincerely for the unmerited honour. 



Apart from attention given to the subject in early youth, it was 

 during the thirteen years, from 1878 to 1890, that with some enthu- 

 siasm though with serious interruptions, I pursued the study of the 

 British marine mollusca. 



In 1 88 1, after a prolonged residence in India, I had the interesting 

 privilege of making the acquaintance, on the Riviera, of that veteran 

 of conchological science, Mr. Sylvanus Hanley, President shortly 

 shortly before his death, of this Society, joint author, as all here know, 

 with Professor Edward Forbes, of the now classic work, '"A History 

 of British Mollusca." At Mr. Hanley's proposal, and with his name 

 at the head of my nomination paper, I became a Fellow of the Linnean 

 Society in 188 1. We can all realize what a spur such a circumstance 

 was likely to prove, and it certainly inspired me to follow on in the 

 study to which Mr. Hanley devoted his long life. During the earlier 

 succeeding years I had con^-^iderable opportunity for dredging on the 

 West of Scotland, from Lamlash Bay northward to Loch Broom and 

 Stornoway, in the lochs of the mainland and in those more open water- 

 ways, the Sound of Jura, Loch Linnhe, the Sound of Sleat and the 

 Minch. 



At the beginning of 1886, aided by the valued counsel of Mr, J. T. 

 Marshall, of Torquay, and of Professor J. R. Henderson, M.B., now 

 of Madras, and, as regards the Cephalopoda, of our esteemed Hon. 

 Secretary, Mr. W. E. Hoyle, I brought out a List of British Marine 

 Shells, according to the arrangement in Jeffreys' " British Conchology," 

 which, I believe, has been somewhat generally used. In consultation 

 with the gentlemen named, the evidence for admitting each separate 

 species into the British fauna was carefully weighed, three of Jeffreys' 

 species being rejected in the process, owing to the absence of record 

 of the occurrence of living specimens within what Jeffreys considered 



