Henry Eeles Dresser

Henry Eeles Dresser ( born May 9, 1838 in Thirsk (Yorkshire ), † November 28, 1915 in Monte Carlo ) was a British businessman and ornithologist.

Life

Dresser came of an old family of yeomen from North Riding of Yorkshire. His parents were Henry and Eliza Ann Dresser Dresser, born Garbutt. The grandfather was a banker, the father - forced the youngest son to stand on its own feet - a trading company founded in 1845 in London, timber sales from the Baltics. His eldest son Henry he gave in 1947, first to a private school in Bromley in Kent, later to a German school in Ahrensburg to learn German. From 1854, he should learn in Gävle and Uppsala Swedish. On the return trip he stayed for some time in Gothenburg, where he was able to expand his knowledge of the preparation of birds in August Wilhelm Malm. In 1856 he first visited St. Petersburg and Finland, where he was to be admitted at a large lumber dealer in the fundamentals of the business. In Uleåborg he succeeded as the first British ornithologists to collect the nest and the nest of a silk tail, giving him abruptly earned the recognition of the British Ornithologists. The following years brought him to wide business through the entire Baltic Sea, to Italy and France, Sweden, Russia and Prussia. Twice, in 1859 and 1862, he traveled to New Brunswick, to direct the sawmill his father shortly. In his travels, he collected bird skins and eggs, which he recorded in his extensive collection.

In June, 1863, therefore the heart of the American Civil War, Dresser went with a delivery to the Confederates to Texas, where he remained for over 18 months and sometimes together with Adolphus Lewis Heermann collected birds. In the late fall of 1864 he returned to London. About 400 bellows he took with him to England and published the results as " Notes on the Birds of Southern Texas " in 1865 and 1866 in The Ibis. In the following years he undertook several trips to Spain, Russia, Turkey, Austria, Italy, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. In 1870, Dresser, a metal trading company in Cannon Street in London. On March 7, 1878, he married Eleanor Walmisley Hodgson with whom he later had a son and a daughter.

Dresser distinguished himself mainly as a connoisseur of European birds, issuing more extensive works. Between 1871 and 1881 emerged, beginning with the participation of Richard Bowdler Sharpe, A History of the Birds of Europe, 1902 to 1903, he published the Manual of Palaearctic Birds, 1910 appeared Eggs of the Birds of Europe. Two monographs on the bee-eaters and Rollers came out 1884-86 and 1893. His collection of nearly 12,000 bellows he left in 1899 to the Museum of the Owens College, Manchester.

Since 1865, Dresser member of the British Ornithologists ' Union and served in 1882 and 1888 as its secretary. According to the statement Philip Sclater Lutley he would have been also one of the founding members, who have not held him his trips away. He was also a member of the Linnean Society of London and the Zoological Society of London and an honorary member of the American Ornithologists ' Union.

Dresser died in November 1915 in Monte Carlo.