HUNTER, William

This is the well-known Dr Hunter, Court Physician to Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, and founder of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. Hunter originally intended his collections (most of which related to his work as a surgeon and not to entomology which formed only a small part) to form part of a School of Anatomy and Medicine in London but chose Glasgow University when this proposal failed to find support with the Government. Fabricius’s involvement came about during one of his various journeys around Europe pursuing entomological matters. In his Autobiography (translated from the Danish by Frederick Hope and published in Trans.ESL, iv, 1845) Fabricius mentions his indebtedness to Dr Solander at the British Museum who introduced him to Hunter and others ‘whose houses and libraries and collections were soon opened to me. I determined and described the insects and arranged the species of the collections’. After receipt at Glasgow the collections were greatly enriched by the addition of further collections eg. those of Thomas G.Bishop and James F.X.King. The Types described by Fabricius formed the subject of a paper by Richard Staig The Fabrician Types of Insects in the Hunterian Collection at Glasgow University, Coleoptera Part 1, Cambridge,1931. (I am grateful to Geoff Hancock who kindly supplied me with a photocopy of part of this). Staig noted that Hunter had acquired several types of species founded by the French entomologist Antoine G.Olivier. (MD 5/03)