LEWIS, George W.

Born in Blackheath, the second son of the Rev. R.G.Lewis, Vicar of St. John’s Church. Became interested in beetles as a boy and continued the interest when he was sent to China at the age of 23 as the representative of a firm engaged in the tea trade, Arrow who wrote his obituary in EMM., 62, 1926, p.144 notes that ‘A great part of his Chinese collection seems to have been lost through transport difficulties, but a number of previously unknown species were described, notably of Carabidae, by H. W.Bates.’ And a list of the genera was published by Lewis in Zoo. 21, 1863, pp.8652-53. From China Arrow records that Lewis travelled to Japan in 1867, but he had clearly visited there before because he sent notes from Nagasaki to the first issues of the EMM –‘I have all the trees to myself. Longicornes and Curculionidae are fine and common...’ – dated July 1864 and May 1865. Arrow states that he remained in Japan until 1872 ‘amassing a remarkable collection... of which a large proportion were new to science’. He then returned to England but made a second journey to Japan in 1880 with his wife (formerly Julia Hunter) where he remained for a further two years travelling extensively, particularly to places he had not visited earlier, and with the help of a local assistant whom he trained himself. The result of both trips was the formation of a remarkable collection which when acquired by the NHM in 1910 ‘contained the types of so large a proportion of the known species of Japanese Coleoptera that they will probably never be equalled in importance by any collections which may be brought together in the same country.’ On return from his second trip he stopped in Ceylon for six months, where he also made a large collection. Itineraries of both the second Japanese journey and the Ceylon journey were published by H.W.Bates in Trans.ESL and he also published many of Lewis’ new species eg. ‘Longicorn Beetles of Japan. Additions, chiefly from the later collections of Mr George Lewis’, JournaI LSL., 18, 1884, pp.205-262, and ‘On the Geodephagous Coleoptera collected by Mr George Lewis in Ceylon’ AMNH, 17, 1886, pp.68-81, 143-156, 199-212 Settling back in England after 1882 Lewis devoted himself, with the help of many experts, to his collections and published many descriptions of new species. In working on the Japanese Histeridae he discovered that this family was little known in the rest of the world and he determined to form a collection, becoming, finally, so engrossed that most of his time was spent on it. Between 1884 and 1915 he published 60 genera and 750 species of Histerids. This collection he bequeathed to the NHM. There are several dozen specimens including Ptiliidae bearing Lewis’s name from Japan and Ceylon in the Mason collection at Bolton. Smith (1986) p.133 records that Lewis gave to the HDO specimens of Syntelia histeroides from Japan and Prostomis schlegeli from Ceylon in 1885; Rare beetles of the families Rhysodidae, Carabidae, Cucujidae, etc., mainly from Japan in 1887 and specimens of Paussus chevrolati in 1889. Pedersen (2002) p. 61 records correspondence with Herbert Druce dated 12 January 1900 in the RESL. FRES 1876-1926 (Council 1878, 1884). (MD 11/03)