- Edgar Leopold Layard
Edgar Leopold Layard CMG (
23 July 1824 Florence –1 January 1900 Budleigh Salterton ,Devon , England ) was a British naturalist mainly interested inornithology , born inItaly . He was the sixth son of Henry Peter John Layard of the Ceylon Civil Service with his wife Marianne, the daughter of Nathaniel Austin ofRamsgate , Kent and hence he was the brother of the archaeologist and politicianSir Austen Henry Layard .Layard spent ten years in Ceylon where he studied the local fauna with
Robert Templeton (1802-1892). In 1854 he went to theCape Colony as a civil servant working in the service of the governorGeorge Edward Grey (1812-1898). In 1855, during his spare time, Layard was a curator in theSouth African Museum , and was succeeded byRoland Trimen . After this he had posts inBrazil where he collectedbirds for Arthur Hay (1824-1878).Edgar Layard, who was Honorary
British Consul atNoumea ,New Caledonia and his son, Leopold , were active collectors in this region, mainly of bird specimens. Between 1870 and 1881 they visitedFiji ,Vanuatu ,Samoa ,Tonga , theSolomon Islands ,New Britain andNorfolk Island . Aside from the South African material the bird collections they made from their 'home base' ofNew Caledonia and theLoyalty Islands are the most scientifically important. The Layards sent material toWilliam Sharp MacLeay inSydney but also to many other ornithologists. Their specimens have become very scattered. Many went to the British Museum in London. Others went toHenry Baker Tristram , and are now in theNational Museums & Galleries on Merseyside in Liverpool, England.In 1887 Layard published "The Birds of South Africa" where he described 702
species . This work was later updated byRichard Bowdler Sharpe (1847-1909).Layard's 1st wife, Barbara Anne Calthrop, whom he married in 1845, is commemorated in the specific epithet of Layard's Parakeet ("
Psittacula calthropae ") and he named theBrown-breasted Flycatcher ("Muscicapa muttui") after his Tamil cook Muttu.External links
* [http://mmslouis.googlepages.com/layard,birdsofsouthafrica Images from the revised edition of his "Birds of South Africa."]
ources
* Bo Beolens and Michael Watkins (2003). "Whose Bird? Common Bird Names and the People They Commemorate". Yale University Press (New Haven and London).
*Maurice Boubier (1925) "Evolution of ornithology". Bookshop Felix Alcan (Paris), New scientific collection: II + 308 p.
*Barbara Mearns & Richard Mearns (1998). "The Bird Collectors". Academic Press (London): xvii + 472 p.
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.