i6 



RARE OR LOCAL 

 IRISH LAND AND FRESHWATER MOLLUSCA. 



By R. welch. 



(Read before the Society, September 19, 1903). 



The late Mr. William Thompson, of Belfast, in collecting materials 

 for his "Natural History of Ireland," gave keen attention to the dis- 

 tribution of the mollusca, in which he was assisted by a number of 

 friends and correspondents, such as Waller and Humphreys, to whose 

 co-operation he bears testimony repeatedly in vol. 4 of that work. 

 The Waller shells later became the backbone of the Irish collection 

 in the Museum of Science and Art, Dublin. 



After Thompson's death little attention seems to have been given 

 to the terrestrial mollusca for well over thirty years, with the notable 

 exception of the work done by the late Prof Ralph Tate in the north- 

 east, largely in the little glens of the Belfast hills. It was during his 

 only too short residence in Belfast, and while secretary of the local 

 Naturalists' Field Club, of which he was the founder, that his little 

 book on British land and freshwater molluscs was published, in which 

 many of his local finds were recorded. After his departure a few 

 members of our society paid short visits to Ireland — among others, 

 the late Charles Ashford — who recorded Amphipeplea from several 

 stations. J. G. Milne worked Achill Island and some districts 

 from Armagh to Bundoran ; while that veteran naturalist, Samuel A. 

 Stewart, of the Belfast Field Club, sent many records to Mr. Taylor 

 for the proposed British Census. The results in these cases are re- 

 corded in oViX Jourtial. 



In the late eighties our president commenced to work for his list 

 published in the Irish Naturalist in 1892, and enhsted a few other 

 workers in various parts of the country. The results of his help and 

 encouragement to, in many cases, isolated workers, may be seen in 

 numerous local lists and short records. This Hst attracted the atten- 

 tion of well-known conchologists in England, two of whom, E. Collier 

 and R. Standen, have published good local lists for the Ballycastle, 

 Portsalon, Galway, North Clare, and Kenmare districts. In this they 

 had as fellow-workers on various visits Dr. G. W. Chaster, J. R. Hardy, 

 and B. Tomlin, with some Irish workers also. 



Steady work year by year, especially since 1895, when the work of 

 five or six members of the Field Club Conference at Galway was 

 published by R, Standen in the Irish Naturalist, has greatly aided 

 our knowledge of the distribution of many rare species. Paludestriiia 

 jenkinsi has been added to the Irish list, and is now recorded from 

 no less than eleven stations, north, south, east, and west, two of these 

 being inland localities, both on Lough Neagh, 



