Attended Whitgift School, Croydon and the medical school at St. Thomas’s Hosital where he was awarded the Send Entomological Scholarship in 1924. Settled in Great Bookham after qualifying and practised there for fifty two years. Appointed GP Consultant Surgeon, Leatherhead Hospital in 1940 and also worked as police surgeon for the Reigate and Dorking divisions. In his police work Easton used beetles to try to determine the time of death of corpses which led to his publishing ‘Lathrimaeum atrocephalum Gyll: a medico-legal problem’ (EMM., 80, 1944, p.237) and, later, ‘The Coleoptera of a dead fox including two species new to Britain [Acrotrichis cognata and A. arnoldi] (ibid., 102, 1966, pp.205-210). He came to realise, however, that dipterous larvae were even more helpful and subsequently worked on these with K.G.V.Smith who included the work in his A Manual of Forensic Entomology (1986). As a Coleopterist Easton is best known for his pioneering work on Meligethes. His 44 papers on this genus began with ‘A freakish specimen of Meligethes aeneus’ (EMM., 82, 1946, 243) and ended in 1968. In between he published articles on the South-West Arabian fauna, 1954; the North African fauna, 1955; the fauna of Afghanistan, 1956; the Japanese fauna, 1957 and the Abyssinian fauna, 1959. His publications on British Meligethes included ‘Meligethes erichsoni Brisout an addition to the British list’ (EMM., 84, 1948, pp.11-12); ‘Meligethes nanus Erichs. reaffirmed as a British species' (ibid., 87, 1951, pp.44-46) and ‘Meligethes viridescens (Fab.) ab. nigrinus Everts. in Britain’ (ibid., 90, 1945, p.251). He also carried out extensive breeding experiments to determine larval host plants and parasites, and armed with this information he contacted botanists throughout the British Isles and visited sites where these plants grew. Easton's work on the British fauna was not confined to this genus alone, however. His additions to our list apart from the two Piliids mentioned above, included: Catopidius depressus (Murray), which he took on Box Hill (ibid., 77, 1941, p.18); Apion lemoroi Brisout, taken in Effingham (ibid., 82, 1946, 243); Acrotrichis rugulosa Rossk. (ibid., 104, 1968, p.3) and Atheta boletophila Thoms. (ibid., 1969, pp.197-198), taken in the Rothiemurchus Forest, Inverness; A. immigrans which he also took in Inverness, and its sub-genus Phyconoma, were new to science (ibid., 107, 1971, pp.24-26). He also carried out a number of general surveys such as ‘The Coleoptera of Flood refuse: A comparison of samples from Surrey and Oxfordshire’ (ibid., 83, 1947, pp.113-5), which involved sorting out 3,795 specimens, and another on flood refuse from Montgomeryshire (ibid., 101, 1965, pp.45-46). He wrote various notes on the Surrey fauna, particularly of Bookham Common, some of which appeared in the London Naturalist, and a comprehensive account. On many of his field trips he was accompanied by his friend and companion Miss Maureen Fryer after whom he named Meligethes maureenae. He worked for a time at the NHM and gave to the collections there 203 specimens collected by P.S.Nathan in India (1949.207) apart from his own extensive collection of Meligethes shortly before his death. All his field notes and collections he made available to Ashley Kirk Spriggs who made extensive use of them for Pollen Beetles (1996) in the RESL Handbooks for the Indentification of British Insects series. A correspondence collection including approximately 500 letters from 12 British entomologists dated c.1947-1978 concerning his work on Meligethes is in the NHM (listed in Harvey et al (1996)) together with approximately 100 drawings of Meligethes. Max Barclay has said of this collection ‘[He] wrote a code on his specimens, but thank goodness, we did get his notebooks. A work experience student, Kate Picard, had the job of transferring the note book entries to data labels and adding them to the specimens. Easton’s specimens also needed re-pinning as he used copper based pins.’ FRES from 1940. There is an obituary by M. Bacchus and A Kirk-Spriggs in EMM., 126, 1990, pp.89-95 with portrait and full bibliography, and another by the same authors, in Antenna, 14, 1990, pp.61-63. (MD 10/02, 10/03))
Dates
1907 – 1989