Robert Charles Wroughton

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Robert Charles Wroughton (born August 15, 1849 in Naseerabad , Kalat ; died May 15, 1921 in Chiswick , Middlesex ) was a British-Indian forest clerk and British zoologist.

Life

Robert Charles Wroughton was born on August 15, 1849 in Naseerabad in the princely state of Kalat, which was then administered by the British East India Company . His father, British Major General RC Wroughton, was himself an avid sportsman and nature lover, who aroused his son's interest in nature at an early age. Robert Charles spent the first years of his childhood in India, but later attended the renowned Bedford School and King's College London in England . In 1877 he married the daughter of a captain in the Royal Indian Navy . Wroughton spent his retirement in Chiswick, County Middlesex and died there on May 15, 1921. Until a few weeks before his death, he worked as a volunteer zoologist at the Natural History Museum, despite a serious illness.

Forestry Officer in British India

On December 10, 1871, Wroughton joined the Bombay Presidency as Assistant Conservator of Forests in the service of the Imperial Forestry Service , which had been set up a few years earlier . This authority was subordinate to the Imperial Forest Department founded in 1864 , which was headed by the German botanist and forest scientist Dietrich Brandis . The new employees of the Imperial Forestry Service , including Wroughton, received forest science training in Germany or France. Wroughton attended the École nationale des eaux et forêts in Nancy , one of the world's first institutions of its kind. In the course of his almost 33-year career in the British-Indian forest administration, Wroughton rose to its head. He retired in 1904 with the rank of Inspector-General of Forests .

First natural history research

During his entire service, Wroughton was a collector of natural history objects. In their work, the naturalists of the 19th century relied to a considerable extent on the support of interested laypeople, especially from the colonies. Wroughton was a member of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) founded in 1883 and initially focused on research on hymenoptera , especially ants . In an exchange with the Swiss entomologist Auguste Forel , one of the most important ant researchers of his time, Wroughton acquired a considerable amount of knowledge about ants. His first scientific publications included an essay on native hymenoptera in 1889 and the transcription of a lecture on ants that he had given to the members of the BNHS in April 1891. This was published in two parts in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society in 1892 . Wroughton generously made his collections available for research. The French entomologist Ernest André's examination of the ant wasps collected by Wroughton during the Bombay presidency led to the first description of 14 new species.

In April 1892, the British zoologist Reginald Innes Pocock , who at the time was responsible for the collections of millipedes and tarantulas at the Natural History Museum in London , gave a lecture at the BNHS. At the beginning of his presentation he expressed the hope that he might succeed in drawing the attention of the naturalists living in India to the little-explored millipedes of India. In the following years Wroughton collected millipedes and scorpions, which he gave Pocock for scientific processing. The influence of Pocock eventually led Wroughton to become intensively involved in the study of mammals and to make significant contributions in this area.

Wroughton began collecting bats in 1897 and sent the specimens to the zoologist Oldfield Thomas at the Natural History Museum. The first shipment of only six specimens led to the first description of a new species, Scotophilus wroughtoni, which, however, is a synonym of Scotophilus kuhlii kuhlii (Leach , 1821). The scientific processing of his other finds in the Konkan region carried out Wroughton together with Oldfield Thomas during a leave of absence from service in the Natural History Museum in London. He published the results in his first publication on mammalogy in 1899 . During his remaining years of service, Wroughton collected abundant small mammals, especially rodents in addition to bats. Among alleged specimens of the Indian palm squirrel, he discovered some animals with a different drawing and described them in 1905 as the northern palm squirrel . In the following years he described numerous other species of rodents on the basis of collection material.

Zoologist in London

After retiring in 1904, Wroughton settled in Chiswick , just a few miles from the Natural History Museum in South Kensington . He spent his retirement playing golf two days a week and volunteering at the museum four days. Since the focus of the museum's mammal collection at the beginning of his work was animals of African origin, Wroughton studied the mammal fauna of Africa intensively. This resulted in the first publications about collections that were sent to the museum. Impressed by the results of the collecting trips commissioned and financed by Charles Rudd in southern Africa, and motivated by his own family visit to the British colony of Natal , Wroughton was particularly interested in the mammals of that region.

Wroughton deeply regretted that British Indian fauna was poorly represented in the museum's mammal collection. In collaboration with Walter S. Millard , a leading member of the Bombay Natural History Society and editor of the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society since 1906 , Wroughton planned and organized the large-scale systematic recording of the mammalian fauna of British India. As Mammal Survey of India has become known study began in 1911 with a permanent staff of the BNHS collectors and taxidermist . It lasted until 1923 and at its peak employed half a dozen skilled workers in India who were gradually sent to different parts of British India. The collecting activity in India resulted in more than 50,000 well-prepared collection copies, each of which was sent to London for scientific processing.

In London, Robert Charles Wroughton and Oldfield Thomas and other collaborators initially identified and described the new collection items. Wroughton was later supported by his brother-in-law Thomas B. Fry , who had also been a forest clerk for the Imperial Forest Service, and who continued the work together after Wroughton's death. The results of the Mammal Survey of India were published in 55 essays, mostly written by Wroughton, from 1912 to 1922 in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society . When less new material arrived at the Natural History Museum as a result of the First World War, Wroughton used the time gained to compose a summary of the work carried out as part of the Mammal Survey of India . The work was published in seven parts in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society from 1918 to 1921 . It was to become the basis for a new edition of the two mammal volumes of the Fauna of British India published by William Thomas Blanford in 1888 and 1891 . Wroughton had already agreed to work on the second edition of "Blanford" together with Martin Alister Campbell Hinton , a young employee of the Natural History Museum. The work was finally edited by Reginald Innes Pocock and only published in 1939 and 1941.

In his obituary, published in 1922 in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society , Wroughton's colleague and friend Oldfield Thomas stated that the Mammal Survey of India, the parts of the zoological collections of the museums in London and Bombay acquired by him, and the scientific publications published in connection with it together made a memorial to Wroughton that would last as long as zoology existed.

Dedication names (selection)

The species and genera named in honor of Wroughton reflect the changing fields of activity in his life as a collector and researcher:

Publications (selection)

Wroughton's numerous publications, mostly in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, contained more than 200 initial descriptions of species and subspecies of African and Asian mammals.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anonymous: Obituary. In: The Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, June 1921, pp. 143-144, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dentomologistsmon571921oxfo~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn193~ double-sided%3Dja~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  2. ↑ Anonymous: Robert Charles Wroughton. In: The Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, July 1921, p. 161, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dentomologistsmon571921oxfo~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn215~ double-sided%3Dja~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Oldfield Thomas: Obituary. Robert Charles Wroughton, p. 930.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f Oldfield Thomas: Obituary. Robert Charles Wroughton, p. 929.
  5. ^ Bombay Natural History Society (ed.): The Bombay Natural History Society. 1883-1933, p. 31.
  6. ^ Reginald Innes Pocock: Report upon two collections of Myriapoda sent from Ceylon by Mr. EE Green and from various parts of Southern India by Mr. Edgar Thurston of the Government Central Museum, Madras. In: Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 1892, Volume 7, 2nd delivery, pp. 131-174, panels I and II, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Djournalofbombayn71892bomb~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn201~doppelseiten%3Dja~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  7. ^ S. Vishnupriya: Robert Charles Wroughton (1849-1921), p. 26.
  8. ↑ Oldfield Thomas: On some Bats obtained in the Surat and Thana Districts by Mr. RC Wroughton. In: Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 1897, Volume 11, 2nd delivery, pp. 274-276, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Djournalofbombayn11189798bomb~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn366~ double-sided%3Dja~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  9. ^ A b Robert Charles Wroughton: Some Konkan Bats.
  10. ↑ S. Vishnupriya: Robert Charles Wroughton (1849-1921), pp. 26-27.
  11. ^ Norman Boyd Kinnear: The history of Indian Mammalogy and Ornithology. Part 1, p. 775.
  12. ↑ a b S. Vishnupriya: Robert Charles Wroughton (1849-1921), p. 27.
  13. ^ Matt Ridley and Paul Newton: Biology under the Raj. In: New Scientist, September 22, 1983, pp. 857-867, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3DzyglVsl-iN0C~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dpa857~ double sided%3Dja~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  14. ↑ a b Bombay Natural History Society (ed.): The Bombay Natural History Society. 1883-1933, p. 93.
  15. ^ Reginald Innes Pocock: Obituary. Thomas Burgess Fry, 1850-1931. In: Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 1932, Volume 36, 1st delivery, p. 225, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Djournalof361219321933bomb~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn342~doppelseiten%3Dja~LT%3D~PUR%3D .
  16. ^ Norman Boyd Kinnear: The history of Indian Mammalogy and Ornithology. Part 1, p. 776.
  17. ^ Reginald Innes Pocock: Diagnoses of some New Indian Arachnida. In: Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 1899, Volume 12, 4th Delivery, pp. 744-745.
personal data
SURNAME Wroughton, Robert Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Indian forest officer and British zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1849
PLACE OF BIRTH Naseerabad , Kalat
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1921
Place of death Chiswick , Middlesex