357 



THE 



JOURNAL OF CONCHOLOGY. 



Vol. II. OCTOBER, 1906. No. 12. 



OBITUARY NOTICE OF THE LATE WILLIAM NELSON. 

 Born 183s November 9— Died 1906 January 28. 



(Read before the Society, June 13th, igo6). 



Plate VII. 



By the death of William Nelson, of Leeds, which happened at his 

 residence at Crossgates, on the 28th of January, the Conchological 

 Society loses one of its founders, and co-editor with Mr. John W. 

 Taylor of the first volumes of this /oiirnal. He has so seldom been 

 seen at its meetings of late tliat possibly but few of the members can 

 realize the value of his work, his example, his influence, to the Society 

 during its period of early development, but that it was adequately 

 appreciated may he seen in the fact that he was the only British 

 resident to receive the honour of being selected one of the ten 

 Honorary Life Members, a position in which he succeeded so eminent 

 a malacologist as J. R. Bourguignat. 



Mr. Nelson was a worthy representative of the working-man class 

 of naturalist, and he was a genuine naturalist from a very early age. 

 Born on the eastern side of Leeds in November, 1835, ^^ ^^s but a 

 child of four, when after a long illness, he was sent to Askern, where 

 he lived with an old man, Mellor by name, who had a collection of 

 butterflies, and in whose company the little boy, seeing Painted Ladies 

 and Marbled Whites, was first fired with the love of nature. This 

 was re-awakened when in 1859, beginning to work at his trade of 

 currier at Wakefield, he came into contact with the naturalists of that 

 town and their collections. The specific impetus that made him a 

 conchologist came from listening to a lecture on the subject of shells 

 given at Leeds by the celebrated marine zoologist, the Rev. Thomas 

 Hincks, B.A. His activity and energy soon manifested itself and 

 about 1862 he gathered kindred spirits unto himself and founded an 

 East End Naturalists' Society in Leeds, and in Birmingham — in which 



