Biographical dictionary
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| Name | Dates | Biography | |
|---|---|---|---|
| MARRINER, Thomas Frederick | 1890? – 1942? | Naturalist who lived all his life in Carlisle and had a special interest in Coleoptera, particularly ladybirds. Collected from 1904 mainly in Cumberland. He is recorded to have had some sort of breakdown in 1934 but was recovering in 1936. His first publication on beetles appears to have been ‘Coccinella 11 punctata ab. Lemani’ in ERJV., 35, 1923, p.57. This was followed by ‘The Two Spot Ladybird’ (Discovery, 1926, pp.407-09); ‘A preliminary account of the life history of Coccinella 11-punctata’ (Trans.ESL., 75, 1927, pp.47-52); ‘Coccinellid hybrids: A provoked communication’ (ERJV., 40, 1928, pp.176-177); ‘A pale Anatis ocellata’ (ibid., 41, 1929, pp.183-84); ‘A Coccinellid parasite’ (Naturalist, 1932, pp.221-22); ‘The Cumberland Chrysomelidae’ (ERJV., 50, 1938, pp.63-67) and two notes on the ‘Coleoptera of Easton’ (ibid., 51,1939, pp.122-127 and 52, 1940, p.11). A collection of Coleoptera made by Marriner, in 11 drawers, is in the Hancock Museum, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. David Sheppard, who amalgamated some of Marriner’s insects when working in the Museum, tells me that this was given in 1942, when it occupied 14 store boxes, (in which the specimens were recorded to be ‘mouldy’) and a separate box given by Mrs Little in 1948 (in which many of the specimens were broken and only some were kept). The first included the type of Coccinella 10-punctata ab. Inornata. (I am grateful to David Sheppard for this information).FRESL from 17 March 1920. (MD 2/04) | |
| MARRIOT | There are beetles labelled ‘ex.coll Marriott’ in the general collection at Birmingham Museum. (MD 2/04) | ||
| MARSH, J.G. | Specimens collected by Marsh are incorporated in the P.B.Mason collection at Bolton. He is mentioned in Janson diary at Cambridge eg. July 1869. (MD 2/04) | ||
| MARSHALL, James | Gave foreign (St Kitts, West Indies) Lepidoptera and Coleoptera to Glasgow Museum in 1891 (1891-23). Lived at 143 Wellington St. Glasgow. (MD 2/04) | ||
| MARSHALL, Sir Guy Anstruther Knox | 20 December 1871 – 8 April 1959 | Born in Amritsar, India, where his father was a District Judge and his uncle Chief Engineer and Secretary to the Government of the Punjab. Educated at a prep school in Margate and at Charterhouse School.. In 1891, after failing his examinations for the Indian Civil Service, he sailed to Durban, South Africa. After various exploits, in 1901 he was working as Co-manager in the Salisbury District and Estates Company. It was at this time that he met and subsequently employed C.F.Swynnerton, well known for his tse-tse fly work. In 1907 he was appointed Curator of the Sarawak Museum, but sudden illness prevented him from taking up the post, and in 1909 he was appointed Scientific Secretary to the new Entomological Research Committee (Tropical Africa). In this position Marshall developed the organisation so that it became the model for several others elsewhere in the world. He initiated the Bulletin of Entomological Research and the Review of Applied Entomology, and it was due to his enthusiasm that the Imperial Bureau of Entomology (became the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau) was established in 1913. Between the Wars he advised the Colonial Office on entomological matters. Later he founded one of the first commercial companies devoted to pest control. After retiring in 1942 he continued to work at the NHM until his death. Marshall’s interest in entomology was undoubtedly fostered by his father and uncle who were both keen naturalists. At his prep school the German master stimulated an interest in Lepidoptera, and when he joined Charterhouse this had developed to include beetles. His early work in Africa centred on mimicry in particular and, after writing a number of short notes, in 1902 he published a lengthy study with E.B.Poulton on this subject in Trans.ESL, 35, pp. 287-584 detailing five years’ research. From this date on, however, almost all his work and publications, amounting to 204 papers and a volume in the FBI series, were focussed on the Curculionidae of which he described numerous new species from all over the world. Smith (1986) p. 135 records that there are various insects of all orders in the HDO from South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (1896-1906) together with a series of types and syntypes of the weevils described in Proc.ZSL 1906. p.911. The NHM houses a loose-leaf MS recording data on the capture of South African Coleoptera 1891-1898 and there is correspondence and other material in the RESL listed by Pedersen (2002). FRESL 1895-1959 (Hon.). Council 1907-8, 1919-21, 1924-6, 1928-30, 1932-4, 1938-40, bibliography (and from which much of the above is taken). (MD 2/04, 11/09) | |
| MARSHALL, Thomas | One of the founder members of the RESL and father of Thomas Ansell Marshall (see below). Published a number of notes on stridulation in insects including ‘Cause of sound in Cychrus rostratus’, Ent. Mag. 1, 1833, pp.213-14. This is presumably the Marshall referred to by Stephens (1828) as ‘my friend’ (p. 62). Stephens also refers to his having a collection (p.179). It may also be the Thomas Marshall who presented 1,051 British insects including 445 Coleoptera to Leicester Museum on 8 October 1849 (Lott, 2009, p.6). (MD 2/04, 11/09) | ||
| MARSHALL, Thomas Ansell | 18 March 1827 – 11 April 1903 | Son of Thomas Marshall (see above). Born in Keswick and lived in Edgbaston. Studied at Bridgnorth School and Oxford in both of which he obtained scholarships. Learned Sanskrit and Hebrew. Worked at the British Museum before taking Holy Orders. Became a master at Cheltenham College and afterwards one of the principles of Milford College. Subsequently had various livings in England before moving to Antigua in the West Indies as Bishop’s Chaplain. Lost his wife from fever there and narrowly escaped death himself. Returned to England to live with his sister in Cornwall where he remained until 1897. His last move was to Corsica where he devoted the remainder of his life to entomology. He died at Ajaccio. Marshall’s entomological interests centred mainly on the Ichneumonidae on which he published extensively, (collection in Nottingham Museum) but before that, at the suggestion of Hamlet Clark whose collection he had earlier studied , he wrote a monograph on the Coleoptera ‘Corynodinorum Recensio’ in JournalLSL., 8, 1865, pp.24-50. There are letters and paintings, and ‘Some account of T.A.M’s earlier days’ in the HDO (Smith (1986) p.83) and 5MS leaves on his Hymenoptera collection in the NHM. Pederson (2002) lists correspondence in the RESL. There are obituaries in EMM., 39, 1903, pp.152-53; ERJV., 15, 1903, pp.190-191; and Proc.ESL., 1903, lxxv-vi. (MD 2/04) | |
| MARSHAM, Thomas | d.1819 | No contemporary biographical account of this important early Coleopterist is known. He was well educated; a founder member of the Linnean Society and its Secretary from 1788-98 and Treasurer from 1898-1816. He was also Secretary to the West India Dock Company for many years and became an officer in the volunteer corps of the Home Guard in 1802. He married a Miss Symes of Ufford, Northants. and had two daughters. Of his period in the Home Guard, Mackechnie-Jarvis (1976) quotes an interesting letter from Alexander Macleay to William Kirby (in the LSL) of 14 November 1802: ‘I do not believe I have seen our friend Marsham four times since the beginning of the war. This is my fault in some degree, but not entirely, for he is wholly taken up with his volunteer corps. Mrs Marsham says she is more bored with soldiering than ever she was by insect hunting. In fact our friend thinks of nothing but the repelling of our daring foe, and sticking of Frenchmen instead of the sticking of insects’. His first entomological publication is usually said to have been ‘Observations on the Phalaena lubricipeda of Linneaus and some other moths allied to it’ in Trans.LSL, 1, 1791, pp.67-75 (which includes a colour plate), but a more ambitious piece, ‘System of Entomology’, separately published copies of which are dated 1796, apparently appeared in Hall’s Royal Encyclopaedia in 1788, since there is an offprint (with title page dated 1796) in the library of the RESL which was formerly in the possession of J.F.Stephens and H.T.Stainton. The publication for which he is best known, however, is Entomologia Britannica, sistens Insecta Britanniae indigena secundum Linneum deposita. Coleoptera 1802. The work, dedicated to the Linnean Society, was intended to cover other insects too, but almost certainly lost money because Marsham produced no further volumes. In it Marsham acknowledges the help of some 20 collaborators and lists 1,307 species (compared with some 441 listed by Linnaeus as European). Later articles included ‘Observations on the Curculio trifolii’ (Trans.,LSL 6, 1806, pp.142-46. With Markwick and Lehmann); ‘Some observations on an insect that destroys the wheat, supposed to be a wireworm’ (ibid., 9, 1808, pp.160-61); ‘Description of Notoclea, a new genus of Coleopterous insects from New Holland’ (ibid., pp. 283-95) and ‘Some account of an insect of the genus Buprestis, taken alive out of wood composing a desk, which had been made above twenty years; in a letter to Mr Macleay’ (ibid., 10, 1811, pp.399-403) Stephens (1828-18) includes numerous references to Marsham’s collection which he had purchased shortly before Marsham’s death. The identification of the Marsham specimens which Stepehens incorporated into his own collection, now in the NHM, is explored in detail by Peter Hammond in ‘On the type material of Staphylinidae described by T.Marsham and J.F.Stephens’ (Ent Gaz., 23, pp.129-135). He notes in particular ‘that one traditional view, possibly widely adhered to, that it is frequently or even usually impossible to recognise original specimens of particular Marsham or Stephens species as such, is false... Indeed, there is every reason to believe that specimens on which most of the taxa described by Marsham and Stephens were based can be located and recognised in the Stephens and Kirby collections, which are maintained by the Museum as separate entities.’ Stephens bought Marsham’s coleoptera as one lot (out of 466) in the auction sale of all his collections by King on 8-10 September 1819 (Chalmers-Hunt (1976) pp.6 and 78) There are catalogues in the NHM and belonging to Chalmers-Hunt. Harvey et al (1996) p.129 list three MSS in the Insect Room Lists referring to Marsham’s insects and a Ms ‘Notes by G.R.Waterhouse on Marsham’s and Stephens’ type specimens’. Marsham’s death is referred to in a letter from Kirby to Macleay of 24 December 1819 quoted by MacKechnie- Jarvis (1976), p.93: ‘Our poor friend Marsham’s departure from this troublesome world I learned from a friend who observed it in publick print and your son on my application was good enough to give me some particulars of his death. Sorrows came cumulatively upon him previous to his removal and I trust that they have worked out for him an entrance into a happier state than that he has lately experienced below.’ (MD 2/04) | |
| MARTIN, Miss | Gave 1218 specimens of various insects including Coleoptera to Glasgow Museum in 1900 (1900-174) Lived at 41 Naburn St., Glasgow. (MD 2/04) | ||
| MARTYN, Thomas | fl. 1760 – 1816 | The writer and publisher of the first book on British beetles. Martyn has been much confused with Thomas Martyn (1735-1825), the Cambridge botanist, whose interests were equally wide ranging. In sorting out who did what the reader is recommended to look at DNB and Thomas Wilkinson, ‘John Abbot’s London Years’, part IV, ERJV., 98, 1984, p.273. Martyn is recorded to have been born in Coventry, but by 1770 he was established in London as a well-known dealer in natural history specimens. It was he who was responsible for sending John Abbott to America. Wilkinson (1984) mentions a letter amongst Dru Drury’s correspondence detailing Martyn’s payment to Thomas James of New York in 1772 for a shipment of insects, indicating that he already had contacts there. Later Martyn’s business had grown to the extent that he was able to purchase for 400 guineas two thirds of the shells brought back by Captain Cook on his last expedition. To further his natural history interests Martyn set up in 1786 at 26 King Street, Covent Garden. ‘at very great expence... an Academy of youths... possessing a natural genius for drawing and painting, to be cultivated and exerted under his immediate and sole direction’ in delineating objects of natural history. Details of the school are contained in the Preface to the second edition of The Universal Conchologist, one of the publications of the Academy which had first appeared in four folio volumes in 1784. Martyn demanded very great accuracy from his artists and ‘it has been deemed requisite, in a variety of instances, to make six or ten duplicate paintings of some of the more difficult subjects... before one could be obtained which the author judges sufficiently accurate to adopt for an original’. This applied in particular, apparently, to The English Entomologist exhibiting all the Coleopterous Insects found in England, including upwards of five hundred different Species, the Figures of which have never before been given to the Public... Drawn and Painted after Nature, arranged and named according to the Linnean System. which he published in 1792/3, for he states: ‘In the work on English insects particularly, very great expense, as well as disappointment, was incurred through the obstinacy or carelessiness [sic] of the artist employed to etch the figures; who was too vain for his own judgement, or too frugal of his labour, to follow with due accuracy the drawings prepared for him: this rendered his whole performance, which he had twice attempted, altogether unserviceable, and gave occasion to introduce this additional branch of business [etching] into the academy’. (For bibliographic information about the volume see H.B.Weiss, ‘Thomas Martyn’s English Entomologist’, Journal of the New York Entomological Society, 46, 1938, pp.321-325; T.Wilkinson, ‘A bibliographical description of Thomas Martyn’s The English Entomologist (1792)’ (ERJV, 90, 1978, pp.263-64); and the same author’s ‘The date of Thomas Martyn’s The English Entomologist 1792 or 1793’ (ibid., 93, 1981, p.135)). The English Entomologist appeared in both English and French editions (my copy, in a contemporary binding, has both the English and French texts included). In the preface to the volume Martyn makes clear that ‘all imaginable care has been taken, not to admit the figure of any one insect into this work, where the least doubt remained of its being a native of this country’, but does not state whose insects were the source of the illustrations, the implication being that they were his own. Although Martyn clearly states in The English Entomologist that it would be followed by two further volumes covering Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, and Neuroptera (2) and Diptera (3), these appear never to have been produced. The only other entomological publication which he published was Psyche: Figures of non descript Lepidopterous Insects in 1797, only 12 copies or less of which were printed (see Lisney, p.xiv), although he did publish a volume on spiders in 1793 and another on plants in 1795. Apart from his natural history activities Martyn also wrote political tracts and was involved in promoting hot air balloons, publishing Hints of Important Uses to be Derived from Aerostatic Globes in 1784. Apart from the sources mentioned above see also W.H.Dall, ‘Thomas Martyn and the Universal Conchologist’ in Proc.U.S. national Museum, 29, 1908, pp.415-432; H.B.Weiss, ‘Thomas Martyn, conchologist, entomologist and pamphleteer of the eighteenth century’ in American Collector, 3. 1926, pp.57-62, and , on his Psyche, Journal of the Society for the History of Natural History, 12 (2), pp.213-17. A major collection of his works including a copy of the English Entomologist on vellum and paper with a portrait of Martyn borne aloft by an eagle which had belonged to William Beckford and H. Bradley Martin, was sold by Sotheby's on 8 May 2002. (I am grateful to David Oram for pointing this out to me). (MD 2/04, 12/19) |