MURRAY, Andrew

Born in Edinburgh and educated for the law. Appointed Writer to the Signet. Tiring of the legal profession he moved in 1860 to London where he was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Royal Horticultural Society. He remained with the Society, taking a particular interest in the Coniferae on which he published many papers, and at the time of his death was its Scientific Director. In character and appearance Murray was described as a ‘strikingly original... somewhat uncouth figure’ (EMM., 14, 1878, pp.215-16). Murray’s interest in entomology and particularly Coleoptera started before he left Edinburgh. His earliest paper ‘Description de deux Buprestides mouveaux’ was published in Ann.Soc.ent.France, 10, 1852, pp. 253-255 and in the same year he also published a ‘Report on the Coleoptera of Scotland’ in Proc.Roy.Phys. Soc.Edin.. This last led to his best known work of this period the Catalogue of the Coleoptera of Scotland, 1853, the preface to which makes clear that he was in contact with all the Scottish Coleopterists of his day. He also explains that he himself collected particularly in Fife, Perth, Kinross and Clackmannan together with John T. Syme, Professor Fleming, George A.Coventry and Dr Greville. Murray’s other major publication on the British fauna at this time - he published several descriptions of new species from Africa and South America, and was thought to have a brother who was a missionary in Old Calabar who sent him specimens - was a revision of Catops in Ann,Nat.Hist,. 18, 1856, which was subsequently separately published. Following his move to London Murray’s most important paper was a ‘Monograph of the Family of Nitidulariae’ in Trans.LSL, 24, 1864, pp.211-414 and 5 col. plates. This was intended to be part 1 of a two part work which would embrace the world fauna but it was not completed for reasons of cost. In 1868 as part of his work for the RHS Murray formed a collection of insects illustrative of economic entomology for the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) which was shown at Bethnal Green Museum and for which he wrote a popular Handbook. When an outbreak of the Colorado beetle caused a hasty Act of Parliament to be passed in 1877 Murray was selected to visit all outbreaks.Pedersen (2002) p. 55 records correspondence dated 16 February 1863 with A.H.Haliday in the RESL. There is an obituary in EMM, 14, 1878, pp. 215-16. (MD 2/04)