Page 4 _- February 1978 _No. 2 NEW YORK SHELL CLUB Notas 
by Mr. Blaney's sister and others, 
at the island dock : : 
ee lee a tour of part of the island, including an incredip) 
rough jeep ride, to meet Mr. Blaney's wife and to see the family's 
i f huge spruce 
resent homes, the family burial plot under a grove 0 pruces, 
end finally the "studio," where much of Dwight Blaney's collection 
is still intact. 
The Blaney family has owned Ironbound Island, largest island in 
Frenchman's Bay, for more than three generations, and various family 
members spend about nine months of each year on the island which is, 
incidentally, without electricity. During the first half of the 
19th century a number of families lived on the island, catching lo- 
cal fish, boiling them to extract oil, which was then marketed, 
Some of the large iron caldrons are still on the island. David 
Blaney, spry and active at 75, is the son of Dwight Blaney, who 
died in 1944 at the age of 79. The father, who was a landscape 
painter, architect and naturalist, dredged extensively for mollusks 
in Frenchman's Bay in the years around 1900. He also collected 
land snails, bird skins, artifacts from shell heaps, and antiques. 
Except for the bird skins, which he donated to the Boston Society 
of Natural History, much of the collection remains on the island, 
housed in his "studio," near the island's center. 
We were shown numerous cabinet drawers containing hundreds of the 
smaller dredged specimens, all mounted in glass-topped boxes and 
meticulously labelled. Dwight was often visited by Edward S. Morse, 
a more famous Maine malacologist, known to some of the family as 
"the absent-minded professor." The numerous "Frenchman's Bay" local- 
ity records in Charles W. Johnson's "List of the Mollusca of New 
re cre (1915) would suggest that he consulted the Blaney collec- 
on. 
After a pleasant and all too short visit, with its fascinating 
glimpses of the life of a Victorian naturalist, we returned to Bar 
Harbor with a feeling of considerable satisfaction and a hope that 
this interesting collection might ultimately come to rest in some 
center of malacological research. 
Ext thhicd. ’ Ass is teget Director 
Springfield Science Museum 
Springfield, Massachusetts 
SNATL-RAISING PLANNED 
DELRAY BEACH -- Federal authorities want to spend $2.5 million to 
b 
onahte miles of dikes near here for the sole purpose of raising 
And the snails would be bred for the Sole purpose of being fed to 
the rare Ev i 
caer erglades Kite, one of the most endangered species in the 
The kite eats only Snails, and even h 
: as a hooked beak designed to 
say snails out of their shells. But there are only 150 of ie birds 
nown to exist in marshy South Florida. 
- « « TODAY, Dec. 15, 1977 
The snail in question is the Flori 
orida Apple Snai Pp 
Say, unable to flourish in the drained Everglades. = oS 
