Thomas Vernon Wollaston

Thomas Vernon Wollaston ( born March 9, 1822 in Scotter, Lincolnshire, † January 4, 1878 in Teignmouth, Devon ) was an English entomologist and malacologist.

Life and work

Wollaston came from a wealthy family. He attended the Grammar School in Bury St Edmunds and studied in 1842 at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he 1845 BA, 1849 MA gained. In 1847 he was admitted to the Linnean Society of London. When symptoms of pulmonary disease became noticeable, he spent 1847/48 on the recovery in Madeira. After his return he was looking at various places in England to find a discount for his illness climate and eventually settled in Teignmouth. Until 1855 he spent four more winters in Madeira; In 1858 he toured with Richard Thomas Lowe and John Gray, the Canary Islands and visited them again the following year along with Lowe. In 1866, he was with Gray on the Cape Verde Islands. In all of these visits, he devoted himself despite his illness with considerable persistence and tenacity of exploring the wildlife, especially the beetle and other insect orders and molluscs. In numerous publications he described hundreds of new species. He took the view that the Atlantic island groups ( Macaronesia ) had a compound possessed in earlier geological eras to the mainland. He was a close friend of Charles Darwin, even if his life he could not bring the recognition of the theory of evolution because of his religious beliefs. 1855 acquired his collection of beetles maderensischer the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum ).

1869 Wollaston married the youngest daughter of his friend Shepherd from Teignmouth. The marriage remained childless. 1875-1876 he spent with his wife and John Gray for half a year on St. Helena. There he exerted himself well in his collecting excursions, which initially went unnoticed because of the mild climate, but on the stormy journey home in bad weather led to a breakdown from which he never recovered. Another stay in Madeira was ineffective. Wollaston died in January 1878.

Works

  • Insecta Maderensia, 1854
  • On the Variation of Species, with Especial Reference to the Insecta 1856
  • Coleoptera Atlantidum, 1865
  • Testacea Atlantica, or the land and freshwater shells of the Azores, Madeira, Salvages, Canaries, Cape Verdes, and Saint Helena., 1878.

Wollaston also wrote a number of short and longer work on North Atlantic beetle.

  • Naturalist
  • Entomologist
  • Malacologist
  • Member of the Linnean Society
  • Briton
  • Born in 1822
  • Died in 1878
  • Man
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