Edgar Leopold Layard

Edgar Leopold Layard ( born July 23, 1824 in Florence, Italy, † January 1, 1900 in Budleigh Salterton, Devon, England ) was a British diplomat and naturalist. His research focus was ornithology.

Life and work

Layard's ancestors were Huguenots. He was the sixth son of Henry Peter John Layard, an employee of the Ceylon Civil Service and his wife Marianne Austen. His uncle was Benjamin Austin, a London solicitor and close friend of Benjamin Disraeli in the 1820s and 1830s. His brother, Sir Austen Henry Layard was a well-known politician and archaeologist.

From 1844 Layard spent ten years in Ceylon ( now Sri Lanka), where he studied the fauna together with Robert Templeton ( 1802-1892 ). In 1854 he went to the Cape Colony and worked under Governor George Edward Grey as a civil servant. During his free time, he was the first curator in the South African Museum, founded in 1855, where Roland Trimen in 1872 and was succeeded by. In the aftermath Layard lived in Brazil and gathered together with Arthur Hay birds.

Edgar Layard, the British Honorary Consul in Noumea in New Caledonia was, and his son Edgar Leopold Layard Calthrop ( in the literature as either ELC Layard or as Leopold Layard stated, to distinguish him from his father ) were active bird collector. They undertook expeditions to Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, New Britain and on Norfolk Island. In addition to the South African material are the bird collections, which the two Layard together contributed to New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands, the most important scientific. Your yield they sent to William Sharp Macleay to Sydney but also to many other ornithologists, so that she is now dispersed strong. A large part went to the Natural History Museum at Tring, and another, which is now kept in the World Museum Liverpool, Henry Baker Tristram.

Layard 1887 published the book The Birds of South Africa, in which he described 702 species. This work was later updated by Richard Bowdler Sharpe.

Dedikationsnamen

Daniel Giraud Elliot named 1878, the Emerald Dove ( Ptilinopus layardi ) from the Fiji Islands in honor of Edgar Leopold Layard. Henry Baker Tristram named 1879 Layardhuhn ( Megapodius layardi ) and Gustav Hartlaub 1862 Layardgrasmücke (Sylvia layardi ) by Layard. In mammals, the 1849 described by Edward Blyth Layard palm squirrel ( Funambulus layardi ) and Layard Whale ( Mesoplodon layardii ) bear his name. Layard's first wife, Barbara Anne Calthrop, whom he married in 1845, will be honored in the epithet of the blue tail parakeet (Psittacula calthropae ).