Thomas RD Bell
Thomas Reid Davys Bell (born May 2, 1863 in Bandon ; died June 24, 1948 in Karwar ) was a British-Indian forest clerk, entomologist, ornithologist and botanist.
youth
Thomas Reid Davys Bell was the youngest child in a family of twelve. He moved to Dresden with his mother at an early age, where he spent most of his childhood. At the age of 17 or 18 he went to London and attended the private educational institution Wren and Gurney, where one of his brothers worked as a teacher. Wren and Gurney specifically prepared candidates for the entrance exams for admission to the British Army or employment in the administration of the United Kingdom or British India . Bell failed the exam for admission to the Indian Civil Service , but passed the entrance exams to the Royal Military Academy Woolwich and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst . Nevertheless, he decided against an army career and later passed the entrance exam for the British-Indian Imperial Forestry Service . This authority was subordinate to the Imperial Forest Department founded in 1864 and was headed by the German botanist and forest scientist Dietrich Brandis .
Forestry Officer in British India
The new employees of the Imperial Forestry Service , including Bell, received forest science training in Germany or France. Bell attended the École nationale des eaux et forêts in Nancy , one of the world's first institutions of this kind. In 1884 he finished his training and began working as a forestry officer in British India in November, which he carried out in the Carnatic . This place of employment between the Coromandel Coast and the Western Ghats was of great importance for Bell's later activity as a collector and naturalist.
In the late 1890s, Bell was transferred to the Khandesh District . In 1899 he returned to the Carnatic for a short time, but was soon transferred to Karachi under vigorous and fruitless protest . There he met again with his friend EH Aitken, who worked there as a customs officer.
At the beginning of 1906 Bell was transferred to Belgaum . There he sustained a foot injury that became infected and was ultimately diagnosed as cancer. Bell traveled to London for treatment, where the diagnosis could not be confirmed. He stayed in London and Edinburgh for a while to recover and returned to India in good health in late 1908.
In 1911 Bell was made a member of the Order of the Indian Empire , but did not take part in the award until two years later after several reminders by his superiors. Most recently, Bell was Chief Conservator of Forests of the Forestry Department of the Bombay Presidency . He hated this office job in Pune , but he used his position for frequent inspection trips to remote parts of the country.
In 1920 Bell retired and settled in Karwar .
Natural history
After joining the Indian Forest Service , Bell quickly took an interest in entomology. The natural history had at that time in the Anglo-Indian society a high priority and Bell became friends with Edward Hamilton Aitken and the entomologist and ornithologist James Davidson . These relationships greatly fueled Bell's interest in butterflies . In 1896, all three jointly published an article on the butterflies of the region in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society , Bell's first scientific publication. In the years that followed, Bell built up an extensive collection of butterflies and beetles .
When Davidson retired in 1896, they both went on a trip to Kashmir where Davidson wanted to collect bird eggs . The trip wasn't very successful, but Bell had begun to take an interest in ornithology and bird eggs as well. Back then, not only ornithology was of great importance. The research of bird eggs and bird nests was given such great importance that oology and caliology ornithological sub- disciplines were created. Entire expeditions were only intended to discover the previously unknown eggs or the nests of rare bird species.
Around this time, Bell gave up his extensive collection of beetles and immediately started a new collection, the focus of which was now on the moths and hymenoptera . In 1930 he sent his entire entomological collection to the British Museum, initially for security reasons and later as a foundation. Probably the largest collection ever assembled by a single person, it consisted of 3,000 butterflies , 12,000 moths, 1,900 beetles, 1,720 hymenoptera and 20 dragonflies. It contained numerous series of butterflies from British India in all stages of development that Bell raised himself.
In the journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Bell published a series of articles on butterflies in the early 20th century. Even professionally interested readers were overwhelmed by the precise depictions of the butterflies and their stages of development, including detailed drawings. After 1930 he attempted to include a series of articles on moths in one of the respected journals for natural history. His manuscript was so extensive that it was rejected by all magazines. Bell saw this as a personal defeat and a heavy blow. Ultimately, his findings were published in 1937 in the 19th volume of the Fauna of India , which he wrote with Francis B. Scott .
Bell's greatest importance for entomology and ornithology lies not in his few publications, but in his work as a collector and the work done for other naturalists. He maintained a lively correspondence and exchange of collection copies with numerous important naturalists of his time, including, in addition to Davidson and Aitken, Auguste Forel , Carlo Emery , Charles Rothschild , Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild and Karl Jordan . In 1936 Bell traveled to England and spent a lot of time with Willie Horace Thomas Tams studying his collection of moths in the British Museum.
As a forest clerk, Bell was also a botanist. During his service, he dealt with the flowering plants and grasses of Kanara. In his old age he mainly devoted himself to orchids , many of which were painted by his sister Eva.
Private
In the 1920s, a few years after his retirement, Bell ventured into the timber trade with its own company . He entered into a partnership with a company in the princely state of Savantvadi . After a few months, his business partner fled, and Bell himself suffered a great financial loss.
In October 1904 Bell's sister Eva came to visit British India for the first time, and they undertook a trip together to the Carnatic. In 1912 or 1913 both sisters came for a longer visit and after Bell's retirement in 1920 Eva lived with him in India for some time. In early 1937 Bell traveled to Lucerne with his brother, where both sisters lived. In late spring he returned to Karwar with Eva. She stayed in India when she died in May 1941. Bell's health then deteriorated steadily. He could not drive and only take short walks. In 1946 his niece moved to Karwar and stayed there until Bell died on June 24, 1948.
Dedication names (selection)
- Leptogenys bellii Emery , 1901
- Meranoplus bellii Forel , 1902
- Stigmatomma bellii ( Forel , 1900)
publication
- (with Francis B. Scott) Moths. Vol. 5. Sphingidae. In the series The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Taylor and Francis, London 1937, digitized .
literature
- Norman Boyd Kinnear : Obituary. TRD Bell. In: Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 1948, Volume 48, No. 1, pp. 167-171, digitized .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Norman Boyd Kinnear: Obituary. TRD Bell, p. 167.
- ↑ a b c d Norman Boyd Kinnear: Obituary. TRD Bell, p. 168.
- ↑ a b c d Norman Boyd Kinnear: Obituary. TRD Bell, p. 169.
- ↑ a b c d e f Norman Boyd Kinnear: Obituary. TRD Bell, p. 170.
- ^ A b c Norman Boyd Kinnear: Obituary. TRD Bell, p. 171.
- ↑ Carlo Emery : Spicilegio mirmecologico. In: Bollettino della Società Entomologica Italiana 1901, Volume 33, pp. 57-63, here p. 59, digitized .
- ↑ Auguste Forel: Myrmicinae nouveaux de l'Inde et de Ceylan. In: Revue Suisse de Zoologie 1902, Volume 10, pp. 165–249, here p. 240, digitized .
- ↑ Auguste Forel : Les Formicides de l'Empire des Indes et de Ceylan. Part VI. In: Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 1900, Volume 13, pp. 52-65, here p. 55, digitized .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bell, Thomas RD |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bell, Thomas Reid Davys (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British-Indian forest officer, zoologist and botanist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 2, 1863 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bandon |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 24, 1948 |
| Place of death | Karwar |