Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe

Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe (born September 1, 1813 in Penzance , Cornwall , † June 20, 1893 in Brighton , East Sussex ) was an English entomologist . His research focus was the order of the beetles (Coleoptera).

Live and act

After his medical training at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and his qualification for Membership of the Royal College of Surgeons (MRCS) in 1835, he became an assistant doctor in the Royal Navy and served in Australia , the West Indies and the Mediterranean . In 1843 he resigned from the naval service. He married and settled near St Austell in Cornwall, where kaolinite was produced on his wife's estate . When his wife died in 1851, he moved to London and turned to natural history studies. In the following period he undertook collective expeditionsEurope , North Africa and the lower Amazon . His main focus, however, was on the description of the scientific collections of Alfred Russel Wallace , Robert Templeton and other researchers, of which around 2,500 type specimens are kept in the Natural History Museum in London. Pascoe's first scientific treatise, in 1850, was on Cornish flora, but all of his subsequent work was devoted to entomology, particularly beetles. Many of Pascoe's initial scientific descriptions and studies have been published in publications by the Linnean and Entomological Societies. His monographs on the Malaysian and Australian longhorn beetles from the collections of Alfred Russel Wallace are among the most important standard works on this beetle family.

In 1852 Pascoe was elected a Fellow of Linnean Society . In 1854 he became a Fellow of the Entomological Society and from 1864 to 1865 he was President of this society. He was also a member of the Société entomologique de France , the Botanical Society of London and was a member of the executive committee of the Ray Society .

Although Pascoe believed in evolution, he criticized Darwin's theory of evolution in his works .

Fonts (selection)

• 1850: Cornish Plants In: The Botanical gazette; a journal of the progress of British botany and the contemporary literature of the science . London., Pp. 37-39
• 1859: On some new Anthribidae
• 1864: Longicornia malayana; or A descriptive catalog of the species of the three longicorn families Lamiidae, Cerambycidae amd Prionidae
• 1866: On the longicornia of Australia: with a list of all the described species . Linnean Society of London
• 1868: A list of the Australian longicorns . F. White
• 1869: Descriptions of new genera and species of Tenebrionidae from Australia and Tasmania . Taylor and Francis
• 1871: Catalog of the described diurnal Lepidoptera of Australia . F. White
• 1874: Contributions towards a knowledge of the Curculionidae . Journal of the Linnean Society of London
• 1877: Zoological classification: a handy book of reference with tables of the subkingdoms, classes, and orders of the animal kingdom, their characters, and lists of the families and principal genera . John van Voorst (a second edition appeared in 1880)
• 1877: Papers on Curculionidae
• 1882: The student's list of British Coleoptera, with synoptic tables of the families and genera . Taylor and Francis
• 1884: Notes on natural selection and the origin of species . Taylor and Francis
• 1885: List of British vertebrate animals . Taylor and Francis
• 1885: List of the Curculionidae of the Malay Archipelago: collected by Dr. Odoardo Beccari, LM D'Albertis, and others
• 1886: Analytical lists of the classes, orders, etc. of the animal kingdom
• 1888: A list of the described Longicornia of Australia and Tasmania . Taylor and Francis
• 1890: The Darwinian theory of the origin of species
• 1891: A summary of the Darwinian theory of the origin of species . Taylor and Francis

literature

• Obituary in Natural science: a monthly review of scientific progress . Volume 3, 1893: p. 159
• Adolphe Boucard (Ed.): Obituary In: The Humming Bird. A Quarterly, Artistic and Industrial Review . Volume 5. Spring Vale, 1895: pp. 12-13
• Ray Desmond: Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists. CRC Press, 1994, ISBN 0850668433