^^EI,vIr,I, : oiutuarv notkf, — r. d. dakbishirr. 2!^q 



baths, etc., for their benefit, as well as the erection of buildings for 

 the furtherance of education, art, and science. 



Most fortunate indeed was Sir Joseph A\'hitworth in those he had 

 selected to carry out such splendid administrative schemes I They 

 worked in unison with but one aim only — the general good of the 

 community, small and great, poor and rich alike. 



The great hall of the Victoria University of AEanchester rightly 

 named after its founder ; the Whitworth Park also, with its Institute 

 and 7\rt Gallery; the Whitworth Hospital and Institute at Darley 

 Dale in Derbyshire — all these, and other things besides, were the 

 outcome of the princely generosity of Sir Joseph, and the loving and 

 fostering care of the three administrators of his wealth, and especially 

 of the survivor of them all by several years, Mr, Darbishire. 



We may add, he was always particularly interested in the welfare 

 of the Manchester Museum, affiliated to the University, the buildings 

 of which form a not unimportant part in the chief quadrangle ; a 

 large proportion of the cost of the erection had, indeed, been borne 

 by the Whitworth I'rustees. He had also acted in his professional 

 capacity as the legal medium of the transference to the Owens 

 College of the old Natural History Society's Museum, formerly situate 

 in Peter Street, and which had, curiously enough, been offered to 

 and declined by the Corporation of Manchester. 



A similar transference of the collections of the Manchester Geo- 

 logical Society was arranged also through the same medium; and 

 these collections formed the nucleus of the now superb possessions 

 of the Manchester Museum, which are justly considered by experts 

 unsurpassed in the provinces. 



But it must be our chief aim in this brief account, written for a 

 malacological journal, to exhibit the subject of this sketch as espe- 

 cially devoted to that science, as indeed he was. Both recent and 

 fossil shells claimed his attention, and he in time amassed a large 

 and rare series of specimens. He was a friend and ally of the late 

 Dr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, F.R.S., and in his younger days was, we believe, 

 more than once his companion on a dredging expedition. Among 

 the moUusca, he was especially attracted by those genera the species 

 of which exhibit a sculpture bizarre, and of unusual design ; of such 

 he would always endeavour to obtain large and varied suites — such 

 shells as Latiaxis maivcB Gray, an extraordinary gastropod, with flat- 

 tened apex and evolute whorls, beset with an incurved coronal of spines; 

 as Magilus antiqims Montfort, that curious, somewhat uncouth species 

 inhabiting corals and growing with their growth ; the Leptoconchi, 

 probably juvenile forms of the last-named ; or the " Spiny Venus- 

 comb," or " Thorny Woodcock," to quote the old English names 



