Pierre Antoine Delalande

Pierre Antoine Delalande (1787–1823)

Pierre Antoine Delalande (born March 27, 1787 in Versailles , † June 27, 1823 in Paris ) was a French naturalist, explorer and painter.

Life

Delalande was the son of a taxidermist who was employed at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris. As a young man, Delalande also worked in this museum as an assistant to Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire . He was trained as a painter in the studio of the Flemish animal painter Jean-Baptiste Berré (1777–1838). The studio was in the Jardin des Plantes and the animal and landscape paintings were exhibited in the Salon de Paris .

In 1808 Delalande accompanied Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire on a collective zoological excursion to Portugal . In 1813 he was sent to Provence to collect fish and molluscs in the Mediterranean. In 1816, together with the botanist Auguste Saint-Hilaire, he accompanied the French ambassador to Brazil on board the frigate l'Hermione . Delalande and Saint-Hilaire worked as plant collectors in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro . This was the beginning of Saint-Hilaire's research work in South America, about which he published the work "Voyage dans les Provinces de Rio de Janeiro et Minas Geraes".

In 1818 Delalande traveled to southern Africa with his twelve-year-old nephew Jules Verreaux . Between November 1818 and September 1820 they made three trips inland. Her excursions took her east along the Cape Town coast , north to the Olifants River and northeast from Algoa Bay to the Keiskamma River . On his return to France, he presented a collection of 13,405 specimens to the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, including a complete skeleton of a 23-meter-long, stranded whale that was dissected over a period of two months. Delalande's exhibits also included giraffes, rhinos, a hippopotamus, and human remains, some of which had been excavated in an old cemetery in Cape Town and on the battlefield at Grahamstown . He also brought a mineral collection, 10,000 insect preparations and an extensive herbarium with him, although many of his herbarium samples were lost in transit to France and all living plants had to be left behind in Cape Town. While in South Africa, Delalande's health was badly affected by tropical diseases. For his services he received the Order of the Legion of Honor , but no financial support. In 1822 he published an article entitled “Précis d'un voyage au Cap de Bonne-Espérance” in the museum bulletin.

Dedication names

After Delalande include Hypericum lalandii , Tetrapteris lalandiana of, Southern Brustband tyrant ( Corythopis dela landi ) that Spitzhaubenelfe ( Stephanoxis lalandi ), the Delalande's Coua ( Coua delalandei ), the Brazilian sharpnose ( Rhizoprionodon lalandii ) Jasus lalandii , Nucras lalalandii and Named Canary Gecko ( Tarentola delalandii ).

literature

• Bo Beolens, Michael Watkins: Whose Bird? Common Bird Names and the People They Commemorate . Yale University Press, London 2004, ISBN 978-0300103595 , p. 102

Web links

• Biographical entry at JSTOR