Stanley Smyth Flower

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Stanley Smyth Flower (1871-1946)

Major Stanley Smyth Flower OBE (born August 1, 1871 in Lincoln's Inn Fields, London , England , † February 3, 1946 in Tring , Hertfordshire , England) was a British Army officer, colonial administrator, scientific advisor, zoologist and conservationist.

Life

Flower was the second son of Sir William Henry Flower and his wife Georgiana Rosetta, youngest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth . He was born in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons , where his father was a curator. His cousins ​​included Sir Archibald Dennis Flower, head of the family brewery, soldier Nevell Smyth and Robert Baden-Powell , founder of the Boy Scout Movement. Flower showed a keen interest in natural history as a child and from the age of eleven he regularly attended meetings of the Zoological Society of London with his father . After graduating from Wellington College in Berkshire, he studied at King's College London . In 1888 he joined the Artists Rifles in the British Army . In 1890 he received an officer's license with the Northumberland Fusiliers . With his regiment he was deployed in India and the Straits Settlements , where he got the opportunity to study the fauna.

In September 1896, Flower married his fiancée Sibylla Maria Peckham Wallace. This marriage resulted in two sons and two daughters. In 1896 the couple moved to Siam, where Flower was appointed Scientific Advisor to the National Museum in Bangkok by the Kingdom's government . During this time Flower studied the vertebrate fauna of the Malay Peninsula and Siam, where he discovered a new species of blind snake, which George Albert Boulenger named after him in 1899. Between 1896 and 1900 he published eight scientific articles on the reptiles, amphibians, mammals and birds of this region.

In 1898 Flower went to Egypt, where he was appointed director of the Giza Zoological Garden by Lord Cromer . He held this post until 1924, with the exception of his military duties during the First World War between 1914 and 1918. In 1913 he was sent to India by Lord Kitchener . During his time in Giza, Flower organized the construction of a zoological museum and the creation of a fish garden with an aquarium on the island of Gezira.

In addition to passing and enforcing hunting laws in Egypt and Sudan, Flower has been involved in both the identification of unknown species and the protection of endangered species. He campaigned for the preservation of the Egyptian heron population, which was decimated by bird hunters to two small colonies because of the then booming feather fashion. In 1912 the herons were legally protected.

In November 1914, Flower was recalled to the British Army, where he commanded the Egyptian Camel Transport Corps on the Palestine Front . During the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 , Flower served as an interior inspector and political officer in Giza. For his role in this conflict, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire .

After his wife's death in 1938, Flower remarried.

Dedication names

After Flower, there are Flowers blind snake ( Gerrhopilus floweri ), Flowers pointed head dragon ( Pseudocalotes floweri ), Flowers gerbil ( Gerbillus floweri ), Flowers shrew ( Crocidura floweri ), the warty broad-winged bat ( Eptesicus floweri ) as well as the Egyptian subspecies Pterocles exustus floweri of the bay bellied named.

Fonts (selection)

  • Notes on the millipedes, centipedes, scorpions, etc. of the Malay Peninsula and Siam , 1901
  • with Michael John Nicoll : Zoological Gardens Giza near Cairo. Special Report No. 3: Wild Birds of the Giza Gardens 1898-1908 , 1908
  • Report on a zoological mission to India, 1913 . Cairo: Government Press. 1914.
  • The principal species of birds protected by law in Egypt, giving their English, French, Arabic, and scientific names, their local status, their approximate size, and concise notes on their coloration, for purposes of identification. 1918.
  • List of fishes, 1901-1921. Cairo: Government Press. 1921.
  • List of the vertebrated animals exhibited in the gardens of the Zoological Society of London, 1828-1927 (10th edition). London: The Zoological Society. 1929.
  • Contributions to our Knowledge of the Duration of Life in Vertebrate Animals. - V. Mammals

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b George A. Boulenger: Typhlops floweri In: SS Flower: Notes on a second collection of reptiles made in the Malay Peninsula and Siam, from November 1896 to September 1898, with a list of the species recorded from those countries. In: Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1899: p. 654
  2. ↑ George A. Boulenger: A vertebrate fauna of the Malay Peninsula from the Isthmus of Kra to Singapore including the adjacent islands: Reptilia and Batrachia , 1912, p. 70
  3. ↑ Oldfield Thomas: Two new gerbils from Sinai In: Annals and Magazine of Natural History , Series 9, Volume 3, 1919, pp. 559-660
  4. ↑ Guy Dollman: On the African Shrews belonging to the Genus Crocidura In: Annals and Magazine of Natural History , Series 8, Volume 15, 1915, p. 192
  5. ^ William E. de Winton: On a new Species of Bat from the Soudan. In: Annals and Magazine of Natural History , Series 7, Volume 7, 1901, p. 46
  6. ↑ Michael John Nicoll: Description of a new subspecies of Sand-Grouse (Pterocles senegalensis floweri) from Upper Egypt In: Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, Volume 41, 1921, p. 128
personal data
SURNAME Flower, Stanley Smyth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British Army Officer, Colonial Administrator, Scientific Advisor, Zoologist and Conservationist
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Lincoln's Inn Fields, London , England
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 1946
Place of death Tring , Hertfordshire , England