74 Notice of Captain Jas. Laskey, by Robert Gray. 



had been recognised by Montagu and figured by him in his 

 Testacea Britannica. Only a few of these, however, have sur- 

 vived ; for although Montagu was satisfied of their supposed dis- 

 covery, and the late Professor Fleming and others subsequently 

 admitted them into their works, more recent investigations have 

 shewn that a considerable number did not belong to this country 

 at all, but had been brought from foreign parts — probably as 

 ballast — and been ultimately cast up on the beach among the 

 usual shore rejectamenta with native shells. 



In 1813, while his regiment was stationed at Dumbarton 

 Castle, Laskey published "A general Account of the Hunterian 

 Museum of Glasgow, including historical and scientific notices of 

 the various objects of art, literature, Natural History, anatomical 

 preparations, antiquities, &c, in that celebrated collection." In 

 this work he gives a few interesting notes on some of the birds 

 in the Museum. From this time I can trace nothing of his 

 movements, or writings, if indeed he ventured on further publi- 

 cation. He shortly afterwards, as I am informed, mysteriously 

 disappeared from Dunbar, leaving a wife and child* and all his 

 shells and curiosities behind him. Nothing was heard of him for 

 nearly twenty years, when about the year 1832, his wife, while 

 walking on the beach with her brother, was astonished, on 

 coming up to a person intently scrutinizing the shingle, to find 

 her long-lost husband at his old employment of shell collecting. 

 A few days afterwards, however, he disappeared as mysteriously 

 as he had come, and after a lapse of some years his deserted wife 

 heard of his death in indigent circumstances. 



As already stated, Laskey's discoveries did not stand the 

 scrutiny of competent writers who took the trouble to investigate 

 thoroughly into what previous authors had described. Of the 

 forty-four so called new species only eight survive to the present 



* A son who died in his 19th year. He was well known in the town as a 

 daring lad, and an excellent swimmer. On one occasion after a north-easterly- 

 gale, a large black object, supposed by some persons on the look out to be the 

 hull of a wrecked vessel, was seen drifting shorewards among the breakers 

 Young Laskey, who had joined the crowd, at once stripped and gallantly 

 made his way out to the floating object, on the back of which he was shortly 

 seen to scramble This proved to be a huge Greenland whale, which, in less 

 than half-an-hour, was triumphantly hauled on the beach with the reckless 

 youth (who had all the while kept his seat) still on its back. The skeleton of 

 this whale is, if I mistake not, still preserved in one of our public museums. 



