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OBITUARY NOTICE. 



ALEXANDER SOMERVILLE, B.Sc, F.L.S., late President 

 of the Conchological Society. 



By the Rev. G. A. FRANK KNIGHT, M.A., F.R.S.E. 



(Read before the Society, October 12th, 1907). 



On 5th Tune, 1907, there passed away one whose memory will long- 

 be cherished by many a naturalist in Great Britain and Ireland. 

 Alexander Somerville was the eldest son of a distinguished father, 

 the late Rev. A. N. Somerville, D.D., who, after being minister of 

 Anderston Free Church, Glasgow for forty years, at the age of sixty- 

 four resigned his pastorate to become a world-wide evangelist for 

 the remaining twelve years of his life. He died in 1889, crowned 

 with the highest honours his Church could bestow on him, being 

 Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland in 1886-1887. 



The son inherited the pronounced scientific proclivities of his 

 father. Born in Glasgow, in 1843, he was educated at Glasgow 

 Academy, and attended three sessions at the Old College in the 

 High Street. Embracing a business career, after a few years in this 

 country, he proceeded to India, where he spent fifteen years in the 

 service of the well-known firm of Mackinnon, Mackenzie & Co. His 

 health suffering through the Indian climate, he returned to Scotland, 

 and plunged once more into student habits and scientific pursuits 

 long abandoned. He went back to the University, now in its splen- 

 did new buildings at Gilmorehill, attended science classes, and in 

 due course graduated B.Sc. Every branch of natural history had its 

 charm for him. As a boy he had been an ardent entomologist, but 

 now his inclinations turned towards the moUusca. He threw himself 

 into practical research work, and systematically dredged the bays and 

 lochs and firths of our western shores. Not content with investigat- 

 ing within such already well-worked localities as the Firth of Clyde 

 and Oban. Bay, he explored spots hitherto practically untouched by 

 the dredge. The Sound of Jura, with the neighbouring Knapdale 

 Lochs, the deep waters of Loch Linnhe, the islands round lona, the 

 Sound of Sleat and its neighbouring lochs, the western seaboard of 

 the mainland from Loch Carron northwards to Gairloch, Loch 

 Broom, and Loch Inver, the islands of Rum, Eigg, Skye, and the 

 Outer Hebrides, were diligently studied, and thus he was instru- 

 mental in widening the area of our knowledge of the moUusca of 

 these regions in a very marked degree. Most punctilious in regard 

 to exact nomenclature, his lists of species obtamed were models of 



