James Cosmo Melvill

James Cosmo Melvill (1 July 1845 – 4 November 1929) was a British botanist and malacologist who collected plants in Europe and North America.

Family Melvill was born at Hampstead, London, on 1 July 1845. He was a grandson of British administrator in India, Sir James Cosmo Melvill (1792–1861), his father being the latter's second son, also James Cosmo Melvill (1821–1880), onetime assistant Under-Secretary of state for India.

His natural history interests were never professional. He went into business in the Lancashire cotton industry, first in the cotton merchant business of his uncle Edward Hardcastle (who was also MP for South East Lancashire and later Salford North) from 1871, then in 1887 became director of the firm of Messrs G. and R. Dewhurst Ltd, of Manchester, Preston and London, East India and China cotton merchants. but despite posthumous claims he was onetime Member of Parliament for Salford South he neither served in Parliament nor contested the Salford seats as a parliamentary candidate at general elections.

By 1904 he settled in Shropshire at Meole Hall, Meole Brace near Shrewsbury, in which village he served as Churchwarden of the parish church and whose Parochial Church Council was formed on his proposal. Elsewhere within Shropshire he became a governor of the Royal Salop Infirmary, an honorary curator of Shrewsbury Museum and president of the Caradoc and Severn Valley Field Club.

He also had an extensive entomological collection of British butterflies, wasps, flies, and dragonflies. He published many natural history papers in his lifetime. He was a Fellow of the Linnean Society (elected in 1870) and the Zoological Society of London (elected in 1898) and onetime president of the Conchological Society of Great Britain, From 1904 to 1914 he was President of the Shrewsbury-based Caradoc and Severn Valley Field Club and in 1908 was appointed chairman of its committee to publish a Flora of Shropshire, a project which was shelved due to lack of sufficient financial support in 1913.

The World Register of Marine Species mentions 881 marine taxa described by J.C. Melvill, many of which together with Robert Standen (1854–1925). Many of these have become synonyms.

The rein orchid variety "Habenaria melvillii" was botanically named for him.

Death Towards the end of his life Melvill was incapacitated by a fall which dislocated his shoulder. He died at Meole Hall on 4 November 1929 and was buried on 7 November in Shrewsbury General Cemetery in Longden Road.