Surprisingly little is known of Cox considering that his two volume A Handbook of the Coleoptera or Beetles of Great Britain and Ireland, 1874, was one of the most important publications on the British fauna to appear in the 19th century, and the first to use dichotomous keys for species identification which had earlier been used on the Continent (although Mackechnie Jarvis (1976) notes a key to Catops by Murray of 1856 on the dichotomous principle). Cox is recorded as living in London until, in 1894, he was domiciled to Jamaica to take up the position in local government which earned him his Honourable title. It is extraordinary given the competence of the Handbook that no reviews are known and that he published nothing else on Coleoptera. Smith (1986) p.110 records that his collection, including the British material on which his Handbook was based, was given to the HDO by his widow in 1915 and 1922, and include a special collection of Heteromera (some specimens from W.W.Saunders) kept separately. Many volumes from his library are also in the HDO. I have seen a beetle in the Pusa Institute at Delhi bearing the label 'H.E.Cox. Hispa.Behar. 14.IX.14'. (MD 4/02)
Dates
d. December 1914