MASON, Philip Brookes

Born and died at Burton on Trent where both he and his father were doctors. Educated for this profession at Glasgow and University College, London, where he was awarded several prizes and medals before being appointed Demonstrator in Anatomy, a post which he held for three years.. He was also a house surgeon in the hospital of Mr Erichson and Sir Henry Thompson. Mason’s obituary by W.W.Fowler, who was first inspired to take up the study of beetles by Mason (and W.Garneys), mentions that he started collecting objects of natural history at the age of four (EMM., 40, 1903, pp.17-18 and correction p.40). Although he undertook a collecting trip to Iceland in 1889, Fowler notes that ‘for many years he did comparatively little collecting, but devoted a considerable proportion of his income to acquiring well known British collections; among them were the Coleoptera of Mr E.C.Rye and the Rev. A.Matthews (including the latter’s unique collection of Trichopterygidae), the Lepidoptera of Mr T.Wilkinson, Mr Douglas and Mr J.Sang, the Aculeate Hymenoptera of Mr F.Smith and the Hemiptera of Mr Douglas and Mr Scott. The cabinets in time increased upon him so much that he erected a Museum adjoining his house... he also possessed an almost perfect British Herbarium [and]... his natural history library, too, was as complete as he could make it’. Mason published some thirty articles including a number on Coleoptera the first three being in 1879 and including ‘Coleoptera from Portland’ (EMM. 18, 1879, p.134) and the remainder in the ten years before his death. He also funded the publishing of A.Matthews, Corylophidae and Sphaeriidae, (1899) the MSS of which had remained unpublished at the time of Matthews death, and a Supplement to the same author’s Trichopterygidae (1900). Mason also employed John Sang of Darlington to make coloured drawings of the British Staphylinidae ‘executed with great skill and care’ which were never published [pity!]. Although his Lepidoptera (the finest private collection in the country at the time) was sold at auction, his collection of Coleoptera passed to the Chadwick Museum, Bolton, with the duplicates going to H.W.Ellis (see letter dated 5 July 1932 at Bolton). It includes some 73,000 specimens and is essentially the series by E.C.Rye into which has been incorporated the following collections or parts of collections: Edwin Brown, A.Hewgill, G.C.Dupre, T.Wilkinson, J.Pelerin, J.G.Marsh, George Wailes, B.Cooke, J.W.Douglas, E.Shepherd, G.C.Champion, E.G. Kraatz, A.Matthews, P.H.Harper, R.S.Edleston, G.R.Crotch, J.A.Power, J.Brewer, E.W.Janson, T.V.Wollaston, A.H.Haliday, W.G.Blatch, H.Champion and D.Sharp. Geoff Hancock reported in 1976 that the collection ‘has been well maintained but little work has been done on cataloguing. Possibility of 90 species being represented by types’ (Biology Curators Group Newsletter, 3, 1976). A letter from Janson associated with the collection states ‘Dr Mason’s British collection I should regard as one of the best and perhaps largest that exists and I know he bought either through us or direct...’. There is a note on the collection by H.W.Ellis in Proc.RESL., (A), 17, 1942, pp.62-63. There are also Coleoptera bearing Mason’s name in the general collection at Doncaster and several thousand Hymenoptera and Diptera in NMW . The NHM possesses a typescript letter dated 1899 to C.O.Waterhouse. The sale of his library by Stevens on 17 May, 21 June and 12 July 1904 is mentioned in ERJV, 16, 1904, pp.144-45. To the six obituaries listed by Gilbert (1977) may be added C.F. Thornewill, J.Conch., 11, 1904, pp.104-05. FLS 1872, FES 1874 (Council), and member of several foreign societies. (MD 2/04)