Henry Eeles Dresser

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Henry Eeles Dresser, photograph from the ibis anniversary supplement from 1908

Henry Eeles Dresser (born May 9, 1838 in Thirsk (Yorkshire) , † November 28, 1915 in Monte Carlo ) was a British businessman and ornithologist .

Life

Dresser came from an old line of Yeomen of the North Riding of Yorkshire . His parents were Henry Dresser and Eliza Ann Dresser, b. Garbutt. The grandfather was a banker, the father - as the youngest son forced to stand on his own two feet - founded a trading company in London in 1845, which sold wood from the Baltic States . In 1947 he gave his eldest son Henry to a private school in Bromley in Kent and later to a German school in Ahrensburg to learn German. From 1854 he was supposed to learn Swedish in Gävle and Uppsala . On the return trip he stayed in Gothenburg for some time , where he was able to expand his knowledge of the preparation of birds with August Wilhelm Malm . In 1856 he first visited Saint Petersburg and then Finland , where he was to be instructed in the basic business of a large timber merchant. In Uleåborg he was the first British ornithologist to collect the nest and clutch of a waxwing , which suddenly earned him the recognition of English ornithologists. The following years took him on long business trips through the entire Baltic Sea region, to Italy and France, Sweden, Russia and Prussia . He traveled to New Brunswick twice, in 1859 and 1862, to temporarily run his father's sawmill. On his travels he collected bird hides and eggs, which he added to his extensive collection.

In June 1863, in the middle of the Civil War , Dresser made a delivery to the Confederates in Texas , where he stayed for over 18 months and sometimes collected birds together with Adolphus Lewis Heermann . In the late autumn of 1864 he returned to London. He took over 400 bellows to England and published the results as "Notes on the Birds of Southern Texas" in 1865 and 1866 in The Ibis . In the following years he made various trips to Spain, Russia, Turkey, Austria, Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. In 1870 Dresser founded a metal trading company on Cannon Street, London. On March 7, 1878, he married Eleanor Walmisley Hodgson with whom he later had a son and a daughter.

Dresser distinguished himself primarily as a connoisseur of the European bird world and published several extensive works on this. Between 1871 and 1881 he published the Manual of Palaearctic Birds , initially with the participation of Richard Bowdler Sharpe , A History of the Birds of Europe , 1902–1903 , and in 1910 Eggs of the Birds of Europe appeared . Two monographs on the bee-eaters and the racks came out in 1884–86 and 1893. In 1899 he donated his collection of almost 12,000 bellows to the Museum of Owens College in Manchester .

From 1865 Dresser was a member of the British Ornithologists' Union and served as its secretary in 1882 and 1888. According to Philip Lutley Sclater , he would have been one of the founding members if his travels hadn't stopped him. He was also a member of the Linnean Society of London and the Zoological Society of London and an honorary member of the American Ornithologists' Union .

Dresser died in Monte Carlo in November 1915.

literature

  • Philip Lutley Sclater : Biographical Notes of the Original Members of the British Ornithologist's Union, […] in The Ibis 1908, Vol. 2, Anniversary Supplement, ninth delivery, London 1909, pp. 219f, ( digitized )

Web links

  • Stanley D. Casto: Dresser, Henry Eeles , Handbook of Texas Online, published by the Texas State Historical Association, accessed December 11, 2012

Digital copies

personal data
SURNAME Dresser, Henry Eeles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English businessman and ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Thirsk (Yorkshire)
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1915
Place of death Monte Carlo