Biographical dictionary
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| Name | Dates | Biography | |
|---|---|---|---|
| KENDALL, D.A. |
The following is extracted from a catalogue entry at the time of the sale of his collection at Tennants Auction Rooms, Yorkshire, in October 2020. 'A Comprehensive Collection of European Beetles, Insects & Carabids, circa 1960-2002, collected by Dr D. A. Kendall, a large collection of various insects, beetles and carabids, all pinned within glass protected drawers, all with data labels attached, each drawer with attached paper identification label, housed within a large twenty drawer Watkins & Doncaster collectors chest with glazed door, 51cm by 47.5cm by 135.5cm Dr D. A. Kendall, Career Biography: A childhood interest in entomology led to a 45-year professional career in pure and applied entomology, including insect taxonomy, morphology, behaviour and ecology; crop protection and pest control; insect pollination and habitat management for conservation of beneficial insects. He was a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society of London and a Member of the Association of Applied Biologists and is credited with over 200 publications in scientific journals, books, conference proceedings and agricultural magazines. Career History: 1963-69 Graduate and Post-Graduate student at Bristol University. 1969-95 - Government Research Entomologist at Long Ashton Research Station. 1995-2009 - Independent Consultant; Registered Expert Witness and Examiner for the University of Cambridge'. The entry includes a photograph of the cabinet and of three drawers from it. I am grateful to Charlie Barnes for bringing it to my attention (MD 10/20) |
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| KEVAN, Douglas Keely | 4 February 1896 - 15 May 1968 | Born at Chelmsford, Essex and received little orthodox education. His father died when he was ten and he left school to join a firm of timber merchants, G.F.Neame and Co (later Price & Pierce (Woodpulp) Ltd.) where he remained until his retirement in 1958. Served in France for a short time during the First World War before being invalided out in 1915 and transferred to the Army Service Corps. Subsequently rose to the rank of Captain. Following his marriage in 1919 he moved for two years to Finland as his firm’s representative. In December 1921 he took a first in Accountancy and later became a Fellow of the Corporation of Registered Accountants. He went to work in Edinburgh in 1922 and remained there until his death. Apart from reading widely Kevan was also interested in: supernatural phenomena and reincarnation, stamp collecting, Freemasonry, playing the piano and composing - his last fugue, no 67 being composed the year before his death - but his main enthusiasms were shells and beetles, the latter evolving out of the former some time after 1935. Kevan’s first paper on Coleoptera was published in 1939 in the Scottish Naturalist and the first of the series of important papers on some of the more difficult genera of beetles, ‘The aedeagi of the British species of the genus Catops’, for which he is now well know, in 1945 (EMM., 81, pp.69-72). Other papers in this series were: ‘The aedeagi of the British species of the genera Ptomaphagus Ill., Nemadus., Th., Nargus., and Bathyscia Sch.’ (ibid., 81, 1945, pp.121-125); ‘The sexual characters of the British species of the genus Choleva Lat., including C.cisteloides Frohl. new to the British list’ (ibid., 82, 1946, pp.122-130); ‘A revision of the British species of the genus Colon Hbst.’ (ibid., 83, 1947, pp.249-267); ‘The British species of the genus Sitona Germar’ (ibid., 95, 1959, pp. 251-261); ‘The British species of the genus Haltica Geoffrey’ (ibid., 98, 1962, pp.189-196); ‘The British species of the genus Cyphon Paykull including three new to the British list’ (ibid., 98, 1962, pp. 114-121. The new ones were hilaris, Nyholm, pubescens F. and phragmiteticola Nyholm); ‘The British species of the genus Helophorus Illiger, subgenus Helophorus s.str.’ (ibid., 101, 1965, pp.254-268); and ‘The British species of the genus Longitarsus Latreille’ (ibid., 103, 1967, pp.83-110). The dissections and drawings he produced for this series of articles were all made using a Victorian Crouch binocular microscope producing an inverted image. His additions to the British list also included Catops nigriclavis which he took near Pentaitland, E.Lothian (ibid., 82, 1946, pp.155-57); and Sitona brevirostris Solari (ibid., 99, 1963, pp.39-41). Apart from his revisionary work Kevan also undertook the re-arrangement of the general collection of the RSM in 240 cabinet drawers (in the process writing new det labels for each of the more than 100,000 specimens) This collection includes some of his own specimens. He also appears to have worked on the Balfour Browne collection in the Museum many of the specimens of Helophorus, for example, bear his det labels. Kevan’s main collection is also housed in the RSM in an 18 drawer cabinet (home made?) and is accompanied by eight drawers of correspondence. FRES from 1950. There is an obituary by E.C.Pelham-Clinton in EMM., 105, 1969, pp.73-74 and another by A.R.Waterston in Journal of Conchology, London, 26, 1971, pp.419-421. (MD 8/03) | |
| KEYS, James Higman | 18 October 1855 – 14 January 1941 | Born in Plymouth. Showed an early interest in natural history and wanted to pursue this professionally but was persuaded by his father to join the printing and bookselling business which he had established in 1830. In this he remained until his retirement in 1933. He married in 1884 Eliza Mary Bloye who died in 1926 leaving a son and daughter. Malcolm Cameron in an obituary of Keys in EMM, 77, 1941, 60-61, recorded that he first met him in 1898 ‘and on that occasion and many others I look back with great pleasure on numerous excursions over Dartmoor. He was very versatile, and apart from his great skill as a microscopist and micro photographer he not only invented various ingenious gadgets to facilitate his work, but made them himself. He had a broad outlook on life and was of extremely modest temperament...’ . In a postscript to the same obituary R.W.Lloyd recorded that he used to meet him on journeys to Plymouth when staying with his friend F.C.Lemann and that they enjoyed ‘talking about our beetle captures’. There is a third interesting and amusing account of him in Sir John Squire’s The Honeysuckle and the Bee, 1937 in which Sir John describes how he started collecting beetles as a youth and went into Keys’ shop to buy an exercise book in which to record his captures not knowing that Keys was an enthusiast. He described him as ‘a lively little man with spectacles and a big black moustache’. Keys’ first article on entomology was on the Hemipteran Aepophilus bonnairii found when he was looking for Aepus murinus and A.robinii about which he published his first Coleoptera note in EMM, 24, 1888, 275-76. Many articles on the Plymouth fauna then followed leading up to his pamphlet Northern and Hill Country Coleoptera of South Devon (1920). He described three beetles as new to science: Plagiarthrina forhamiana (EMM, 56, 1920, 131-33), Atheta cambricina (ibid., 69, 1933, 77-78) and Atheta oloriphila (ibid., 270-71), all now synonymised with existing species, and three species new to Britain: Anchonidium unguiculare (ibid., 52, 1916, 112-13), Cathormiocerus attaphilus (ibid., 57, 1921, 100-02), and Atheta spissata (ibid., 62, 1926,159-61). He also published a ‘List of the maritime, sub-maritime and coast-frequenting Coleoptera of South Devon and South Cornwall with especial reference to the Plymouth district’ (Journal of the Marine Biological Association, 11(4), 1918, 497-513). Through his business he published a number of entomological books including Claude Morley’s volume on the Ichneumons of Great Britain. Keys’ collection amounting to some 25,700 specimens along with his original catalogue is in the Plymouth City Museum (bequeathed, but only appears to cover the period from 1880-1910), and there are also specimens in the Marlborough College Collection (on permanent loan to the writer). A notebook and entomological journal covering the period 1889 – 1909, are in the RESL library, presented by E.W.Classey in April 1955 (Pedersen, 2002, p.53). J. Freedman, D.Hodge & A. Kearney 'The Life and Entomological Collections of George Carter Bignell', Antenna, 34(1), 2010, 3-8, includes an illustration of Key's bookplate and a picture of his entomology room including microscope. etc.. FRESL 1900-1941. (MD 8/03, 11/09) |
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| KING, James Joseph Francis-Xavier | 1855 - 5 February 1933 | King’s collection is in the ex Hunterian Museum collection in Glasgow University. Pedersen (2002) pp.84, 129 records correspondence with D.J.Jackson and C.J.Wainwright in the RESL.There is an obituary in EMM, 69, 1933, p. 166. (MD 2/08, 11/09) | |
| KIRBY, H.B. | Published ‘Capture of Coleopterous insects in Leicestershire’ in Zool. 1845, p.1094. | ||
| KIRBY, P.J. | He is listed by James,T.J. (2018) as providing a special contribution either in the form of a comprehensive site list or a substantial number of records (MD 1/22) |
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| KIRBY, W. Egmont | Son of W.F.Kirby (see above) and his wife (nee Kappel). Published several entomological books including Beetles, Butterflies, Moths and Other Insects and Insect Foes and Friends, 1898, and wrote an introduction to E.Hofmann, The Young Beetle-Collector’s Handbook, 1897. (MD 8/03) | ||
| KIRBY, William | September 1759 – 4 July 1850 | Born in Witnesham Hall, Suffolk, the son of a solicitor. Educated at Ipswich Grammar School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1781. He became Rector of Barham, close to his family home, in 1782, and remained there throughout his life. For a full account of Kirby the reader is referred to J.Freeman’s Life, 1852 (pp.506) which includes a bibliography and portrait. This mentions that Kirby’s interest in insects was stimulated as a child by watching a ladybird on a window. Subsequently he became known as the ‘father’ of entomology in England largely on the basis of his Monographia Apum Angliae (1802) and the four volume Introduction to Entomology (1815-1826) which he wrote with William Spence. The latter contains numerous references to beetles and is remarkable for the large amount of new information it contains particularly about the lives and habits of insects, as well as the different methods of catching them. In addition to these volumes Kirby also published A Century of Insects, including several New Genera described from his Cabinet which included 94 beetles, and more than thirty articles many of which also described further new genera and species of Coleoptera, many foreign. These included ‘Strepsiptera a new order of insects proposed; and the characters of the order, with those of its genera laid down’ in Trans/em>.LSL, 1813, pp.86-123 (subsequently followed by an addendum in 1815, pp.233-34). His last major publication was On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation of Animals and in their History, Habits and Instincts, being one of the Bridgewater Treatises, 2 volumes, 1835. Freeman includes an interesting account of Kirby’s day to day working gleaned in part from a detailed Journal, the whereabouts of which is now unknown, which Kirby kept throughout most of his life: ‘The time before breakfast was devoted to reading portions of the scriptures in Greek or Hebrew. After breakfast one of the [Christian] Fathers until noon, with a classical author on alternate days, and this was followed by exercise until an early dinner. The afternoon was devoted to natural history, and the evening to miscellaneous reading, correspondence, etc. Wednesday and Friday were devoted to systematic visitation in his parish. These rules were observed with great accuracy for a very long period of his life: latterly his custom was to read the New Testament in Greek after breakfast (which he always did aloud) and it was rarely that this was neglected... He would often rise early to ascertain, if he could, the proceedings of the insect world.’ Kirby’s collection passed by gift to the ESL on 6 May 1835 (on this and its subsequent fate see Neave et al (1933) chapter 8. Part subsequently passed to the NHM including, in 1863, the types of the species listed in the Century. A later collection (c.1858-60) is now in the HDO. His library was sold at auction by Garrod on 7-9 August 1850 and amounted to 548 lots (Chalmers-Hunt (1976) p.91). There are three MS notebooks compiled by Kirby in the NHM titled British Staphylinidae. (The Museum also holds a MS catalogue entitled Museum Entomologicum Barhamaense prima sistens insecta M. Britanniae indigenae and a MS book of notes made on a journey from Barham to Holkham Hall in Norfolk in 1789.) Smith (1986) p. 81 records the existence of Letters to Hope and Westwood (1822-38) in the HDO together with further letters to J.C.Dale (1818-27) and a sheet of ‘Sketches of dissections of parts of mouths of Dynastidae and Melolonthidae’. A drawing by J.O.Westwood of the Stylopid Stylops kirbii named after Kirby by Leach in 1817 (now synonimised with S.melittae which Kirby himself described in 1802) is used by the RESL as its emblem. Kirby became an Associate of the Linnean Society from 1791 and FLS from 1815. Because of his concern to keep entomology within the Society he did not originally support the foundation of the ESL and with the help of A.H.Haworth, J.F.Stephens and others set up a zoological club within the Society. Because many entomologists were not members they were excluded so that pressure for a separate Society grew. When the ESL was founded in 1833 Kirby was sufficiently convinced of the need for it that he accepted the position of Life President. (On this see Freeman who reproduces a long letter from Vigors to Kirby of 1 October 1822). He was elected FRS in 1818. Apart from the Life mentioned above Gilbert (1977) lists fifteen other biographical accounts ranging in date from 1823 to 1932. To these may be added that in Salmon (2000) pp.124-127. (MD 8/03) | |
| KIRBY, William Forsell | 14 January 1844 – 20 November 1912 | Born in Leicester where his father was banker. Worked in the Museum at Dublin (1867-1879) and then, after Frederick Smith’s death, at the NHM (1879-1909). Primarily known as a Lepidopterist but as a curator he was inevitably brought into contact with Coleoptera on which he did do some work. He published an Elementary Text Book of Entomology (1885,1892) and Harvey et al (1996) p. 121 record that there is a loose leaf MS Bibliography of African Coleoptera (c.1890) in the NHM. Kirby was Honorary Secretary to the RESL and there is correspondence in the library there listed in Pedersen (2002). (MD 8/03, 11/09) | |
| KITCHEN, Thomas Basil | 1906 - 8 June 1987 | A Reverend (Canon) who lived in Howden, Goole, Yorkshire and studied Coleoptera. FRES 1950 – 1987. (MD 8/03 |