John Adams FLS of Pembroke (1769–1798): a forgotten Welsh naturalist and conchologist

Abstract

John Adams was a member of a long line of landed gentry from Pembrokeshire, Wales. At a young age, he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society and read four papers before his untimely death by drowning at the age of 29. He described 53 invertebrate species as new to science, mostly from small molluscan shells, but he should be regarded as a naturalist, not a shell collector. He read mathematics at Cambridge University and seems to have relied heavily on his library and social connections to develop his expertise in natural history. Although never publishing on botany, the annotations in his botanical books and his connections with John Symmons and James Edward Smith show him to be competent with the British flora.