KIRBY, William

Born in Witnesham Hall, Suffolk, the son of a solicitor. Educated at Ipswich Grammar School and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1781. He became Rector of Barham, close to his family home, in 1782, and remained there throughout his life. For a full account of Kirby the reader is referred to J.Freeman’s Life, 1852 (pp.506) which includes a bibliography and portrait. This mentions that Kirby’s interest in insects was stimulated as a child by watching a ladybird on a window. Subsequently he became known as the ‘father’ of entomology in England largely on the basis of his Monographia Apum Angliae (1802) and the four volume Introduction to Entomology (1815-1826) which he wrote with William Spence. The latter contains numerous references to beetles and is remarkable for the large amount of new information it contains particularly about the lives and habits of insects, as well as the different methods of catching them. In addition to these volumes Kirby also published A Century of Insects, including several New Genera described from his Cabinet which included 94 beetles, and more than thirty articles many of which also described further new genera and species of Coleoptera, many foreign. These included ‘Strepsiptera a new order of insects proposed; and the characters of the order, with those of its genera laid down’ in Trans/em>.LSL, 1813, pp.86-123 (subsequently followed by an addendum in 1815, pp.233-34). His last major publication was On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation of Animals and in their History, Habits and Instincts, being one of the Bridgewater Treatises, 2 volumes, 1835. Freeman includes an interesting account of Kirby’s day to day working gleaned in part from a detailed Journal, the whereabouts of which is now unknown, which Kirby kept throughout most of his life: ‘The time before breakfast was devoted to reading portions of the scriptures in Greek or Hebrew. After breakfast one of the [Christian] Fathers until noon, with a classical author on alternate days, and this was followed by exercise until an early dinner. The afternoon was devoted to natural history, and the evening to miscellaneous reading, correspondence, etc. Wednesday and Friday were devoted to systematic visitation in his parish. These rules were observed with great accuracy for a very long period of his life: latterly his custom was to read the New Testament in Greek after breakfast (which he always did aloud) and it was rarely that this was neglected... He would often rise early to ascertain, if he could, the proceedings of the insect world.’ Kirby’s collection passed by gift to the ESL on 6 May 1835 (on this and its subsequent fate see Neave et al (1933) chapter 8. Part subsequently passed to the NHM including, in 1863, the types of the species listed in the Century. A later collection (c.1858-60) is now in the HDO. His library was sold at auction by Garrod on 7-9 August 1850 and amounted to 548 lots (Chalmers-Hunt (1976) p.91). There are three MS notebooks compiled by Kirby in the NHM titled British Staphylinidae. (The Museum also holds a MS catalogue entitled Museum Entomologicum Barhamaense prima sistens insecta M. Britanniae indigenae and a MS book of notes made on a journey from Barham to Holkham Hall in Norfolk in 1789.) Smith (1986) p. 81 records the existence of Letters to Hope and Westwood (1822-38) in the HDO together with further letters to J.C.Dale (1818-27) and a sheet of ‘Sketches of dissections of parts of mouths of Dynastidae and Melolonthidae’. A drawing by J.O.Westwood of the Stylopid Stylops kirbii named after Kirby by Leach in 1817 (now synonimised with S.melittae which Kirby himself described in 1802) is used by the RESL as its emblem. Kirby became an Associate of the Linnean Society from 1791 and FLS from 1815. Because of his concern to keep entomology within the Society he did not originally support the foundation of the ESL and with the help of A.H.Haworth, J.F.Stephens and others set up a zoological club within the Society. Because many entomologists were not members they were excluded so that pressure for a separate Society grew. When the ESL was founded in 1833 Kirby was sufficiently convinced of the need for it that he accepted the position of Life President. (On this see Freeman who reproduces a long letter from Vigors to Kirby of 1 October 1822). He was elected FRS in 1818. Apart from the Life mentioned above Gilbert (1977) lists fifteen other biographical accounts ranging in date from 1823 to 1932. To these may be added that in Salmon (2000) pp.124-127. (MD 8/03)