Biographical dictionary

This is the compiler of this Biographical Dictionary. Born in Northampton the son of Arthur Darby, an electrical engineer, and Ilene, nee Eatwell. Educated at Longrood preparatory and Rugby school, High Wycombe College of Further Education and Reading University (Ph.D., 1974). Apprenticed to Barbara Jones, the artist, 1963. Worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1964 – 1989 (Deputy Director 1983-87). Published many books and articles on art and architecture.

Became interested in beetles as a toddler. First serious collecting was carried out at Rugby where he was an active member of the Natural History Society. Coleoptera Recorder for Wiltshire 1993 - 2017, Editor of Recording Wiltshire’s Biodiversity, which he helped to set up, 1995-2001, and Natural History Editor of Wiltshire Studies 2000-2017. His particular interest is in the Ptiliidae on which he has published many papers in Zootaxa, EMM, and other periodicals and described more than 330 new species mostly from the tropics. His other publications include numerous papers on the Wiltshire fauna in Recording Wiltshire's Biodivesity and Wiltshire Studies, three books: Wiltshire Beetles, History, Status Distribution and use in Site Assessment, Malthouse Books, 2009, New Species and Records of Featherwing Beetles, Lambert Academic Publishing, 2017; and More New Species and Records of Featherwing Beetles, Lambert Academic Publishing, 2020; chapters on Histeroiodea, Ptiliidae, Scydmaenidae, and Pselaphidae in A Coleopterist’s Handbook, 3rd edition, AES 1991, and the chapter on Ptiliidae in Duff, 1983.

Travelled extensively in the northern hemisphere, and this is reflected in his collection which includes some 10,000+ specimens and will be given to the NHM. The majority of these are Ptiliidae which, with a large amount of other smaller material, are kept in alcohol. The remainder is very strong in Wiltshire material and includes the collection of Marlborough College which he has on permanent loan. It is housed in two 40 drawer cabinets (previously the property of the NHM). Specimens taken by him may be found in various collections including the Field Museum, Chicago; the Manchester Museum and the NHM. Agathidium darbyii, which he took in the Philippines, was named after him by Angelini and Cooter. He has concentrated on building up a library of Coleoptera and history of entomology books which is now extensive. There is a biography in Who's Who. He is a Scientific Associate of the NHM, member BENHS since 1969 (Council and now Publications Secretary); FRESL since 1977 (Council 1988-90; Library Committee 1983-90, Acting Librarian 1989); FLS since 2020. (MD 5/02, 4/18, 1/21)

Born at ‘The Mount’, Shrewsbury the son of Robert Waring Darwin and Susannah, nee Wedgwood, and the grandson of Erasmus Darwin. Began his formal education in 1817 with Mr Case, the local Unitarian Minister, and in the following year moved to Shrewsbury School. In 1825 he determined to take up medicine and joined his brother Erasmus at Edinburgh University, but after two years he gave this up and decided to become a clergyman instead.

In 1828 he went up to Christ's College, Cambridge to take the necessary degree in English. At Cambridge, however, an earlier interest in natural history burgeoned, and after some opposition from his father, he accepted the post of naturalist on board H.M.S. Beagle under Captain Fitzroy. The Beagle sailed on 27 December 1831, and after an extensive tour which took in the Canary Islands, the Cape Verde Islands, South America, the Galapagos Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, the Keeling Islands, the Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena, the Ascension Islands and the Western Isles, returned on 6 October 1836.

The influence of the voyage on Darwin's subsequent career was enormous. Apart from establishing him as a collector, a geologist and a zoologist, it laid the foundation for his subsequent work on evolution. Three years after returning Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood and after initially living in Great Gower Street, London, they moved in 1842 to the village of Down in Kent. Here Darwin led a retiring life - he contracted an illness on the voyage from which he never fully recovered - making occasional trips to scientific meetings, to doctors, and to other members of his family; corresponding with his various scientific friends; and researching and writing the various publications for which he became so well known.

Apart from the well known On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859, his other chief publications were: Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of HMS Adventure and Beagle, 1832-36; Journal and Remarks, from the third volume of the preceding, subsequently appeared in a second edition titled Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of HMS Beagle, 1845, and a third edition titled A Naturalist's Voyage, 1860; Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle, 1840 (edited by Darwin); The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, 1842, Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands Visited, 1844, and Geological Observations on South America, 1846, constituted the three volumes of The Geology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle; three monographs on different groups of fossils and plants; five volumes on different aspects of plants including On the various Contrivances by which Orchids are fertilised by Insects, 1862; The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1868; The Descent of Man, 1871; and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872. (For a full list of Darwin's works see R.B.Freeman, The Works of Charles Darwin: an Annotated Bibliographical Handlist, second edition, 1977.

Darwin's interest in beetles has long been known from F. Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin including an Autobiographical Chapter, 1887, and other sources. Two more recent publications, however, K.G.V.Smith (ed.), ‘Darwin's Insects’, in Bulletin of the British Museum (Historical Series), 14 (1), 24 September 1987, 1-143, and F.Burkhardt and F. Smith (eds.), ‘The Correspondence of Charles Darwin’, particularly 1, 1821-1836, 1985, enable a much fuller picture of his activities in relation to beetles to be formed. What follows is to a large extent a summary of the detailed material in these works.

In the Autobiography Darwin wrote ‘I must have observed insects with some little care, for when ten years old (1819) I went for three weeks to Plas Edwards on the sea coast in Wales, I was very much interested and surprised at seeing a large black and scarlet Hemipterous insect, many moths (Zygaena) and a Cicindela which are not found in Shropshire. I almost made up my mind to begin collecting all the insects which I could find dead, for on consulting my sister I concluded that it was not right to kill insects for the sake of making a collection’. In fact, further active interest appears to have waited until he went up to Cambridge, and it was then to the Coleoptera in particular that he turned: ‘But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting; for I did not dissect them, and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow.’ His enthusiasm at this time even involved putting beetles into his mouth when his hands were full!

This phase of activity was apparently stimulated by his second cousin, William Darwin Fox, in 1828, for on p.63 of the Autobiography he states: ‘I was introduced to entomology by my second cousin, W. Darwin Fox, a clever and most pleasant man, who was then at Christ's College’. Many letters quoted by Burkhardt and Smith testify to the truth of Darwin's involvement with Fox on entomological matters at this time. On 12 June 1828, for example, Darwin wrote to Fox ‘I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects...My sister has made rough drawings of three of them [all beetles] ... III fig: a most beautiful Leptura (?) very like Quadrifasciata, [Clytus arietis?] only the body is of the same size throughout - I tell you all these particulars as I am anxious to know something about these little g< >s... I have taken three species of Coccinellae, one with 7 white! marks on each elytron - I will mention, as I believe you are interested about it, that I have seen the Cocc: bipunctata (or dispar) 4 or 5 in actu coitus with a black one with 4 red marks... I Have taken Clivina Collaris fig <3> Plate III of Stephens; also a beautiful copper-coloured Elater...Do you want any of the Byrrhus Pillula? I can get any number...’.

Darwin and Fox were joined in their entomological activities at Cambridge by others: John Herbert, William Hore, Leonard Jenyns, Harry Thompson and Albert Way and his correspondence details the numerous outings and captures they made. Way even drew some cartoons of Darwin flourishing a net while riding on the back of beetles with captions such as ‘Go it Charlie!’ and ‘Darwin & his Hobby’. But perhaps the most important of the entomological friendships which Darwin made at this time was with the Rev. Frederick Hope. Darwin wrote to Fox on 29 October 1828 ‘I have been introduced, & if I may presume to say so, struck up a friendship with Mr Hope: I met him at dinner, & I find he knows all my Scotch friends, & we had so much entomological talk, that he asked me bring over all my insects to Netley...’. The visit did not take place until February in the following year when Darwin wrote again: ‘The first day I spent entirely with Mr Hope. - & did little else but talk about and look at insects: his collection is most magnificent & he himself is the most generous of Entomologists he has given me about 160 new species, & actually often wanted to give me the rarest insects of which he had only two specimens... He greatly compliments our exertions in Entomology & says we have taken a wonderfully great number of good insects’.

In the summer of 1829 Darwin set out on a collecting trip in North Wales with Hope planned to last three weeks, but he became ill after two days and had to return to Shrewsbury. This caused him great sorrow particularly since Hope ‘did wonders ... such Colymbetes, such Carabi, & such magnificent Elaters, (2 species of the bright scarlet sort)...’ (letter to Fox 3 July 1829).

Darwin also made the acquaintance of J.F. Stephens at this time writing to Fox on 26 February 1829: ‘On Monday evening I drank tea with Stephens: his cabinet is more magnificent than the most zealous Entomologist could dream of: He appears to be a very good-humored pleasant little man...’. This led to the publication by Stephens of thirty of Darwin's beetles in his Illustrations of British Entomology, 1827-45 (listed in K.G.V.Smith, op. cit., pp.7-9), a fact of which Darwin was very proud.

Undoubtedly the most important friend which Darwin made at Cambridge, from the point of view of his future career, was John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861), Professor of Mineralogy and later of Botany. Henslow was sufficiently interested in beetles to present specimens he had collected to Fox (see letter 5 November 1830, Darwin to Fox), but his interests were also much wider as befitted the subjects he taught, and it was he who pursuaded Darwin to broaden his entomological interests and to take in other aspects of natural history, particularly mineralogy and botany. It was Henslow, too, who was instrumental in obtaining Darwin's appointment to the Beagle, and who subsequently described many of the species he collected. It was also to Henslow that Darwin sent the insects he collected as the voyage progressed.

Thus, Darwin's interest in beetles per se was confined to the period from 1828 to 1831 before he set sail. He did collect numerous beetles while on the Beagle voyage, often in company with his servant Syms Covington, but by this time he was, of course, also collecting and recording in many other fields too, particularly geology. K.G.V.Smith, op. cit., details the localities visited by Darwin on the voyage and the insects collected, together with their present location when known, taking as the basis for this work Darwin's published and manuscript material, particularly the notebooks at Down House, the manuscript Insect Notes in the NHM, and the manuscript Insects in Spirits of Wine at Cambridge. He notes that Darwin had great difficulty after his return in finding taxonomists to identify and describe all his species, and that as a result much of his material was dispersed among specialists and is now lost. On Darwin’s mention of Dytiscus and Colymbetes in ‘On the dispersal of freshwater bivalves’ in Nature. A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Science, 25, 1882, 529-530 see Latissimus, 26, August 2009, 26-27, which includes a photograph of the Colymbetes.

A small storebox of Darwin's British Coleoptera exists in the Museum of Zoology at Cambridge (illustrated by K.G.V.Smith, op. cit., 26-27). A note in the register regarding this collection dated 30 April 1913 states: ‘Small collection of British beetles made by Charles Darwin. The beetles were originally in a cabinet, until in the early '70s. G.R.Crotch removed some or all of them into boxes, with the intention of arranging and renaming them. Only one box has been found, which was given to the Museum as Crotch left it, some of the beetles being named in Crotch's handwriting, others with printed labels. Whether the latter were Darwin's or Crotch's naming is not known. Donated by Sir Francis Darwin, F.R.S.’. Crotch, it should be noted, also gave beetles to Darwin.

Another box of beetles is at Down House (illustrated by K.G.V.Smith, op. cit., pp.37-38). This has been described in the past as containing specimens from the Beagle voyage, but with one exception everything present is British. This box does not contain any of the specimens described by Stephens, however, nor many of the more interesting species referred to in the correspondence. There is a further small box of European beetles at Down House which Smith points out are obviously the Scarabaeidae that Darwin studied for the chapter on sexual selection in vol 1 of the Descent. Ashley Kirke-Spriggs tells me that there are also Darwin specimens from Bahia in the Rippon Collection in NMW.

The major repositories of beetles collected during the Beagle voyage are the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge, the HDO and NHM. Darwin had little respect for the officials at the last and much of the material there found its way into the collections through G.R.Waterhouse, the Coleopterist. Waterhouse was not only a Keeper but was also curator of the Entomological Society's insect collections, and it was no doubt this latter role that prompted Darwin to entrust his collections to him. It was through Waterhouse that the HDO also acquired many of its Darwin specimens. A box of Darwin insects in the National Museum of Ireland at Dublin, which Francis Walker presented to A.H.Haliday does not include Coleoptera.

A MS (26 leaves) Copy of Darwin’s notes in reference to insects collected by him being a list of numbers referring to insects collected during the Beagle voyage, in Syms Covingdon’s hand, with additions and corrections by Darwin is in the NHM (Harvey et al (1996) p.57)

Darwin died at Down House and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Although he disliked the practice of naming new species and genera after individuals, his own name is immortalised in no less than two genera and sixty different species of beetles (listed by K.G.V.Smith, op.cit., 106-109) as well as numerous other insects. P. Marren, 'Darwin's war-horse: beetle-collecting in 19th century England',  British Wildlife, 19 (3), 2008, 153-9, provides an overview (largely based on text in this Dictionary). (MD 5/02, 11/09, 1/22)