Pierre-Médard Diard

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Pierre-Médard Diard (born March 19, 1794 in Saint-Laurent-en-Gâtines , † February 16, 1863 in Jakarta ) was a French naturalist. Shortly after beginning medical school , Diard was drafted into the military and served from 1813 to 1814.

He then studied zoology and anatomy with Georges Cuvier and assisted him in researching the development of the fetus and the eggs of four-legged friends . In 1816 he set out for South Asia .

His travels in South Asia

In May 1818 he met Alfred Duvaucel in Calcutta . Together they drove to the former trading post of the French East India Company Chandernagore , where they began collecting animals and plants for the Paris Muséum national d'histoire naturelle . They hired hunters who brought them live and dead specimens daily, which they described, drew and classified. They also hunted themselves and obtained objects of natural interest from local Rajas . They grew native plants in the garden of their rented property and kept water birds in a pool. In June 1818, they sent the first shipment to Paris, which included a skeleton of a gange dolphin , the head of a Tibetan cattle , some species of little-known birds, mineral specimens and a drawing of a Malaysian tapir , which they found in the menagerie of the British Governor General Hastings of a copy kept there. Subsequent shipments included a live young cashmere goat , pheasants, and various birds.

In December 1818, Thomas Stamford Raffles invited her to accompany him on his travels and to continue her collections in the places he had to officially visit. He offered them to set up a menagerie in his residence in Bencoolen . They agreed to share the zoological collection and left at the end of December. In Pulau Pinang they collected two new species of fish and some birds. In Achem they only collected a few plants, insects, birds, snakes, fish and two deer. In Malacca they bought a bear, an argus pheasant and some birds. In Singapore they procured a dugong , of which they made drawings and a description, which Raffles sent to the Royal Society and which were published in England in 1820. Upon arriving in Bencoolen, Raffles took most of their collection and gave them copies of their drawings, descriptions, and notes. Duvaucel and Diard said goodbye, sent their share to a depot in Calcutta and then parted ways.

Diard traveled to Batavia . In the spring of 1823 he sent a large shipment to Paris that contained 95 species of mammals, 126 species of birds and around 100 species of snakes, as well as the skeletons and skins of black -backed tapirs and Java rhinos . He traveled on to Borneo .

In the spring of 1824 he was probably in Cochinchina . After 1825 he sent his natural history collections to the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie in Leiden . In 1826 he traveled and collected as the controller of the Department of Agriculture of the Government of the Dutch East Indies in Borneo in the areas around Banjarmasin , Pontianak and the Barito River . In 1829 he became a member of the Natural History Commission of the Dutch East Indies and in 1832 it was appointed director.

In the following years he toured the kingdoms of Annam and Cambodia . He was one of the first Europeans to visit the city of Angkor . Until 1848 Diard worked as a researcher in the Malay Archipelago .

Publications

Ordinary pointed squirrel

In February 1820, the Asiatick Society in Calcutta published an article jointly written by Diard and Duvaucel, "Sur une nouvelle espèce de Sorex - Sorex Glis" including a drawing of a pointed squirrel .

His legacy

Java rhinoceros drawn by René Primevère Lesson , 1838

The Paris Museum of Natural History received nearly 2,000 animals, which Diard and Duvaucel collected during their travels in Sumatra and Java in just over a year. Their shipments included 88 types of mammals, 630 types of birds, 59 types of reptiles, and included stuffed animals, skins, skeletons, drawings and descriptions of Sumatran rhinoceros , Java rhinoceros , black -backed tapir , gibbons , slate monkeys and colobus monkeys , two by then unknown species of fruit bats , shrews , skunks , binturong and sun bears . Initial descriptions of some of these species were published by French zoologists who worked in the museum. Anselme Gaëtan Desmarest described the saddleback tapir in 1819; the Sunda stink badger and Paradoxurus hermaphroditus bondar , a subspecies of the Fleckenmusang in 1820; the Malay pangolin , the bare-footed weasel and the species Semnopithecus in 1822.

In 1821, Raffles published descriptions of the species that Diard and Duvaucel collected together in Sumatra, including initial descriptions of Sun Bear , Binturong , Crab Eater , Sumatran Langur , Siamang , Silver Crested Langur , Big Bamboo Rat , Big Picky Squirrel, and Pale Giant Squirrel .

In Borneo Diard collected the first specimen of a freshwater crocodile , which Salomon Müller and Hermann Schlegel described in 1844 as Crocodylus raninus . Schlegel also described some species of snakes collected by Diard in Borneo .

Prelate pheasant

Dedication names

In memory of Diard, scientific names of some species were given:

literature

  • Numa Broc: Dictionnaire illustré des explorateurs et grands voyageurs français du XIXe siècle. Volume II: Asie. Éditions du CTHS, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-7355-0233-3 .
  • JH Peyssonnaux: Vie, voyages et travaux de Pierre Médard Diard. In: Bulletin des amis du vieux Hué. n ° 1 de la 22e année, Hanoï 1935.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ JPF Deleuze: History and description of the Royal Museum of Natural History, published by order of the administration of establishment did (Volume 2). A. Royer, Paris 1823.
  2. ↑ a b c G. Cuvier: Notice sur les voyages de MM Diard et Duvaucel, naturalistes français, dans les Indes orientales et dans les îles de la Sonde. In: Revue encyclopédique. X, June 1821, pp. 472-482.
  3. ^ Société Asiatique: Notice sur le voyage de MA Duvaucel, dans l'Inde. In: Journal asiatique. IV, March 1824, pp. 137-145.
  4. ^ F. Cuvier: Notices sur les voyages de M. Duvaucel. In: Revue encyclopédique. XXI, February 1824, pp. 257-267.
  5. ^ A b I. That: Collecting in the "Land Below the Wind", Herpetological Explorations of Borneo. ( Memento of March 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 1.8 MB). In: Bonn zoological contributions. Volume 52, Issue 3/4, 2003, pp. 231–243.
  6. ^ PM Diard, A. Duvaucel: Sur une nouvelle espèce de Sorex - Sorex Glis. In: Asiatick researches, or, Transactions of the society instituted in Bengal, for inquiring into the history and antiquities, the arts, sciences, and literature of Asia. (1820). Volume 14, Bengal Military Orphans Press, 1822.
  7. ^ Société Asiatique: Troisieme Notice sur le voyage de MA Duvaucel, dans l'Inde, ayant pour objet plus particulier, l'histoire naturelle. In: Journal asiatique. November 1824, pp. 277-285.
  8. ^ TS Raffles: Descriptive Catalog of a Zoological Collection made on account of the Honorable East India Company, in the Island of Sumatra and its Vicinity, under the Direction of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant-Governor of Fort Marlborough; with additional notices illustrative of the Natural History of those Countries. In: The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London. XIII, 1821, pp. 239-340.
  9. ^ WC Wozencraft: Cynopterus titthaecheilus titthaecheilus. In: DE Wilson, DM Reeder (Ed.): Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. 3. Edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2005, ISBN 0-8018-8221-4 .
  10. ^ WC Wozencraft: Callosciurus notatus diardii. In: DE Wilson, DM Reeder (Ed.): Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. 3. Edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2005, ISBN 0-8018-8221-4 .
  11. ^ WC Wozencraft: Rattus tanezumi. In: DE Wilson, DM Reeder (Ed.): Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. 3. Edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2005, ISBN 0-8018-8221-4 .
  12. ^ TR Roberts: Systematic revision of the balitorid loach genus Sewellia of Vietnam and Laos, with diagnoses of four new species. In: Raffles Bulletin of Zoology. 46, 1998, pp. 271-288.
personal data
SURNAME Diard, Pierre-Médard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1794
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Laurent-en-Gâtines
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1863
Place of death Jakarta