IN MEMORIAM—CHARLES ASHFORD. 163 
many of the observations which led to the production of this little 
book were made, for during these years several students worked 
hard and successfully at the Mollusca of the district, but none with 
greater ardour and persistency than C. Ashford. Every field and 
pool, and stream and hill, and quarry and wood was searched, and 
many were the expeditions to Wintersett Reservoir, to Hemsworth 
Dam, and especially to Went Vale, ‘whither’ (writes another 
fellan-student).« on some bright midsummer mornings we started at 
four o’clock and returned with boots soaked through with dew from 
the meadows, but also laden with: bags and boxes of fine soil and 
débris from the foot of the magnesian limestone cliffs, from which 
by careful searching we obtained a number of species of the minute 
forms of Vertigo, the smaller Helices, and some others. I can in 
imagination now see Charles Ashford, with a sheet of paper on his 
desk on which was spread out some of this débris, patiently working 
it over, and hear his pleased exclamation as a specimen of Vertigo 
pusilla, minutissima, or substriata turned up.’ As the outcome of 
this work, Mr. Ashford published a list of the Ackworth Molluscs in 
the ‘ Zoologist’ for April 1854, and ‘The Naturalist’ for August of 
the same year, and repeated the list (with some revision but not 
with later work in the district) in the ‘Quarterly Journal of 
Conchology’ for May 1874. It is interesting to note how a little 
alteration in wording in his latter list increased its value, and also to 
learn from Hugh Richardson, who sifted all the evidence very 
thoroughly for a new list of the Ackworth aire in 1887, that ‘his 
work proved to have been most carefully don 
Astronomy also claimed his attention, ad ‘he made good use of 
the excellent telescope at the college, making one winter a special 
study of Orion, and spending, too, many an evening at the transit 
instrument, filling up the intervals between the transits of ‘ good’ 
stars with observations of various double stars, nebulze, and clusters. 
With all this scientific work he yet found time for close and success- 
ful study and for kindly help of others: this we learn from the 
unanimous voice of his fellow students. ‘He did valde dene in 
omnibus, writes one, ‘ and was our best classic, our best mathematician, 
our best naturalist, all in one ;’ another has ‘the pleasantest remem- 
brance of his cheerful companionship . . . his helpfulness in the 
pursuits of our leisure hours and his quiet influence for good 
through all.’ 
When Charles Ashford left Ackworth in 1854 he left the north of 
England finally, except for some time spent later at Redcar ; with his 
work in his favourite branch while teaching at Hitchin and at 
Tottenham we have not much to do, nor indeed with his short stay 
June 1894. 
