The Entomologist Benjamin Standish.
Nov 26, 2017 12:13:54 GMT
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Post by nomad on Nov 26, 2017 12:13:54 GMT
The Entomologist Benjamin Standish.
Benjamin Standish (1784-1866) is a relatively unknown British Entomologist. Most of the famous entomologists were gentleman collectors, clergymen, military men, lawyers or wealthy individuals, many who were able to live by independent means. Those entomologists left a rich legacy in their collection of specimens and some of them published works on entomology. There are many forgotten field collectors who added to our knowledge of insects and this is the story of one of them.
Benjamin's father was Joseph Standish (1753-1837) and when he died aged 84 he was still following his favourite pursuit of collecting insects. Joseph Standish was a fine painter of insects and John Obadiah Wedgewood (1838) recorded that in The Entomologist's Text Book: An Introduction to the Natural History they often sold for several pounds. Benjamin entered his father's profession as a London cobbler but became so successful in hunting insects he decided to become a professional collector. Edward Newman said that his friend Benjamin over a course of sixty years would often trudge from his home in Camberwell to Darenth Wood and back to hunt insects. A distance of 36 miles = 57 kilometers.
Benjamin had good business sense and was able to buy some properties in London and for the last thirty years of his life he was able to live by independent means. Together with his son Francis Oram Standish (1832-1880), Benjamin decided to build up his own collection, which became renown for its extensive rarities and the beauty of the specimens. Newman in his obituary of Benjamin recalled that " he always believed he was the heir to a baronetcy and six valuable estates in the North of England, Standish Hall and Dewsbury Hall being two of them, the estates bringing in a net income of £60,000 per annum : from papers in his possession it certainly appeared he was the lineal descendant of two baronets, Sir Benjamin and Sir Francis Standish ; but whether he was the legal heir I cannot pretend to say, he never possessed the means to pursue a claim so difficult of proof".
Benjamin's son, Francis Oram Standish, the third generation of the family to become a entomologist, died young at Cheltenham aged just 48. He like his father was a fine painter of insects and some of his illustrations are held by the British Museum of Natural History. The collection of Francis & Benjamin Standish was purchased by the London dealer Edward George Meek and was dispersed at Steven's auction rooms at Covent Garden in London.
To find out more about the collecting activities of Benjamin Standish I have researched the letters that he sent to the famous entomologist James Charles Dale of Glanvilles Wootton in Dorset. Dale spent all his adult life studying the different insect orders that are found in Britain. The Dale's correspondence and his diaries are kept in the library at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The Standish letters contain a wealth of information regarding extinct, rare and mythical British butterflies and moths, and are a time capsule of entomology in the early 19th century. Dale was not only a remarkable entomologist, he had the foresight to keep all of his correspondence for posterity, hundreds of letters to famous and lesser known entomologists. I would like to thank Kate Diston for allowing the access to these precious documents, the contents that I will reveal in a series of articles.
Benjamin Standish. The first letters to J.C. Dale. 1820.
In his first letter to Dale dated February 13, 1820, Benjamin Standish informed him that he had sent him a specimen of the beautiful Kentish Glory, Endromis versicolora that he had requested. This female specimen can still be seen in his collection today and was taken at Darenth Wood in Kent (Fig 1). E. versicolora disappeared from Kent by 1860, when its two famous collecting localities, Birch Wood and parts of Darenth Wood were cut down. Standish had also sent Dale a female of the rare Autumn Prominent, Ptilophora plumigera. He informed Dale that Samuel Stevens had bought a male from him for 30 shillings, a large sum at that time for a single specimen, about a £100 pounds in today's money.
Below. Figure 1. Endromis versicolora. The female (bottom). Darenth Wood, Kent. 1820. Benjamin Standish. Dale coll. OUMNH.
Below. Figure 2. Female of the Autumn (Plumed) Prominent, Ptilophora plumigera. Dale coll. OUMNH.
Dale had written to Joseph Standish requesting that one of his two sons accompany him to collect at Bedford in July. In a letter dated May 1, 1820, Dale learned from Benjamin that there was a little family dispute who should go to Bedford. Benjamin put his own credentials forward, he was the man that Dale had met in London at the Blue Boar Tavern, a stage coach stop with an adjacent coffee house. He mentioned to Dale that he had reset the entire collection of British and foreign insects for William Elford Leach at the British Museum and would be happy to set the insects he captured at Bedford.
The Reverend Charles Abbot and the Bedford oddities
Bedford and Clapham Park Wood, a few miles to the north of that town had been put firmly on the entomologist's map by the naturalist Reverend Charles Abbot (1761-1817). Abbot is remembered not only as the author of the very fine Flora Bedfordiensis (1798) but for adding the Chequered Skipper, Carterocephalus palaemon in 1798 to the British list. However, he is perhaps best known among British entomologists for the strange oddities that he captured. In late May 1803 at Clapham Park Wood he took a specimen of the Scarce Swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius and a few days later he went to White Wood at Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire where he captured two rare immigrant butterflies, the Queen of Spain Fritillary, Issoria lathonia and a Bath White, Pontia daplidice. Nearly a hundred years before, the early Aurelian William Vernon (1666-1711) had recorded taking I. lathonia at White Wood in 1700 and a P. daplidice there in 1702. The latter specimen surviving in the Dalean collection, the oldest known extant set specimen in the world. The ancient White Wood survives today and is now Gamlingay Wood nature reserve. These were the more credible of Abbot's captures. At Clapham Park Wood where he had discovered C. palaemon, Abbot recorded the capture of two exotic skippers, Hesperia bucephalus = Hylephila phyleus and Pyrgus oileus. P.B.M. Allan writing in Talking of Moths (1943) suggested that someone was releasing butterflies in the woodland for Abbot to find and he pointed the finger at the disreputable dealer Plastead of Epping.
Releasing a few butterflies in a wood for another collector to find would be a pointless exercise, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. That person would either need to release a large amount of a particular species beforehand or would need to accompany the collector to the wood and discreetly release the butterfly, while the unsuspecting entomologist was busy, perhaps boxing an insect and to point out the butterfly, so that they could catch it. This planted method is said later to have been used by the Kentish buccaneers, but here we are not taking about several men but one George Parry of Canterbury who used to record his Continentals as British specimens in the Entomologist in the 1870s and then under aliases, write again to the journal to confirm his own captures that came forth from his breeding cages. He at times would send of a telegram to a collector who would unsuspectingly hurry down and together with Parry, they would go to look for the rare butterfly, only for the dealer to chose his moment to release a butterfly stupefied with chloroform from a small box, so the butterfly either landed on the ground or weakly took to the wing which was then easily captured, then the dealer was rewarded for his assiduous efforts.
No one in the literature has ever claimed that Abbot's captures emanated from his own breeding cages. It was no mean feat in 1820 to obtain the eggs or larvae of two Northern American Hesperiids, and one of them, P. oileus was found only in the southern American states but ranged across Mexico, Central America and parts of South America. Someone would have needed to have a wide range of contacts, it is known that Abbot corresponded with some of the great naturalists of the day. After his capture of I. podalirius he wrote to the eminent entomologist Adrian Hardy Haworth and stated that he had seen that species two or three times on previous occasions in the same woodland. Unless there was a colony of this dubious British species at Bedford, its release by someone accompanying him is most unlikely. If the butterfly was released beforehand, such a mobile insect would hardly remain in the confines of a small woodland for very long.
Dale referred to the Bedford naturalist as Dr Abbot, as he had been given a honary degree of Doctor of Divinity by his old university, New College Oxford. Abbot was elected a fellow of the prestigious Linnean society and the general opinion seems to be he was duped by someone else. At Bedford lived another entomologist, Mr Bucklow who is mentioned by Dale in his diary and correspondence. Bucklow living in such a small town as Bedford would have certainly had known Abbot and there is a strong possibility that he accompanied him on collecting trips.
Dale went to Bedford in 1817 to hunt for some of Abbot's rare insects, visiting Clapham Park Wood but perhaps not surprisingly did not capture anything special. After the death of Abbot in 1817 his collection that was kept in two large mahogany and glazed cases along with his notebooks were sold to Bucklow of the Swan Inn in Bedford. During his visit Dale was able to purchase Abbot's collection and notebooks from Bucklow and thus saved some the butterfly specimens and his journals for posterity. The P. daplidice, I. lathonia and I. podalirius (Fig 1-3) taken by Abbot in 1803 have survived with a few others in Dale's collection and these represent some of the earliest known examples of set British Butterflies. These historic butterflies are in poor condition and one wonders what happen to the two American skippers captured by Abbot and his series of Large Blues, Maculinea arion taken near Bedford, perhaps they were later dispensed with.
Below. Figure 3. Iphiclides podalirius captured by Charles Abbot at Clapham Park Wood, Bedfordshire. May 1803. Dale coll. OUMNH.
Below. Figure 4. Issoria lathonia. White Wood, Gamlingay. June 1803. Charles Abbot. Dale coll. OUMNH
Below. Figure 5. Pontia daplidice. White Wood, Gamlingay. June 1803. Charles Abbot. Dale coll. OUMNH.
.
The Bedfordshire colony of M. arion was discovered by Abbot in 1798. It speaks volumes that the more well known localities for M. arion had yet to be discovered and that vast tracts of the British Isles were yet to be explored for their insects. Entomologists at that time being rather thin on the ground. No wonder gentleman and scientific workers such as Dale did not at first suspect any fraudulent activities. Dale was very keen to add specimens of M. arion to his collection and went to Bedford in July 1819. He visited the locality where Abbot has taken his specimens of M. arion, the Mouse's Pasture at Bromham, three miles from Bedford and on July 14, he captured a female specimen but Dale records in his diary, it was a very bad one and this specimen must have been discarded at later date, probably after he had taken better specimens at Langport in Somerset. Dale also added that Mouse's Pasture was not far from Lord Tavistock who had two M. arion from Dr Abbot.
The previous day, July 15, 1819, Dale had visited Clapham Park Wood, but again found none of Abbot's rarities. There were plenty of Marbled Whites, Melanargia galathea and he took the pretty Geometer the Orange Moth Angerona prunaria, a damselfly of the genus Agrion in great plenty and from Bucklow he got a pair of beetles from the Tenebrionidae family that had been bred.
In a letter dated July 8, 1820, Benjamin Standish told Dale that he heard nothing of Mr Bucklow since he had left him at Bedford. He hoped that Dale had a safe journey home from Bedford where they had collected together and that he was not a little fearful for his boxed set insects with the " braces" upon them. At that period collectors used stiff cut cards to hold the wings in place instead of setting paper. Standish told Dale that he meant to return to Bedford on July 15 to look again for the M. arion but only if the weather improved. Standish had beaten a few small larvae of E. versicolora from birch trees, but they had all died, but he had been back to Darenth Wood to collect more and would supply Dale with a fine male.
Joseph Standish wrote to Dale on the July 11, 1820 that he was sorry that the collecting trip with his son Benjamin to Bedford did not turn out more favourable. Dale had hoped to take M. arion and least some of Dr Abbot's rarities. Joseph Standish sent a box of insects that included 11 bred Holly Blue, Celastrina argiolus in exchange for specimens for the now extinct and always scarce Mazarine Blue, Cyaniris semiargus that Dale had captured in his meadows adjoining the manor house at Glanvilles Wootton. In a letter dated July 22, 1820 Joseph Standish sent Dale another list of insects for sale and of interest is another male E. versicolora that he had taken himself in February at Dahn Wood that was probably situated in Kent or perhaps Surrey. Nearly all the insects in the box Joseph Standish was sending to Dale were either captured by himself at Dahn Wood or the famous collecting ground Coombe (Combe) wood at Kingston in Surrey. The most highly priced specimen was a scarce Buprestid beetle at 8 shillings.
The images used in this article were taken by me at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. OUMNH and remain their copyright.
Next. A Fenland Day 1820. Benjamin Standish at Whittlesea Mere in search of the Large Copper, Lycaena dispar.
Benjamin Standish (1784-1866) is a relatively unknown British Entomologist. Most of the famous entomologists were gentleman collectors, clergymen, military men, lawyers or wealthy individuals, many who were able to live by independent means. Those entomologists left a rich legacy in their collection of specimens and some of them published works on entomology. There are many forgotten field collectors who added to our knowledge of insects and this is the story of one of them.
Benjamin's father was Joseph Standish (1753-1837) and when he died aged 84 he was still following his favourite pursuit of collecting insects. Joseph Standish was a fine painter of insects and John Obadiah Wedgewood (1838) recorded that in The Entomologist's Text Book: An Introduction to the Natural History they often sold for several pounds. Benjamin entered his father's profession as a London cobbler but became so successful in hunting insects he decided to become a professional collector. Edward Newman said that his friend Benjamin over a course of sixty years would often trudge from his home in Camberwell to Darenth Wood and back to hunt insects. A distance of 36 miles = 57 kilometers.
Benjamin had good business sense and was able to buy some properties in London and for the last thirty years of his life he was able to live by independent means. Together with his son Francis Oram Standish (1832-1880), Benjamin decided to build up his own collection, which became renown for its extensive rarities and the beauty of the specimens. Newman in his obituary of Benjamin recalled that " he always believed he was the heir to a baronetcy and six valuable estates in the North of England, Standish Hall and Dewsbury Hall being two of them, the estates bringing in a net income of £60,000 per annum : from papers in his possession it certainly appeared he was the lineal descendant of two baronets, Sir Benjamin and Sir Francis Standish ; but whether he was the legal heir I cannot pretend to say, he never possessed the means to pursue a claim so difficult of proof".
Benjamin's son, Francis Oram Standish, the third generation of the family to become a entomologist, died young at Cheltenham aged just 48. He like his father was a fine painter of insects and some of his illustrations are held by the British Museum of Natural History. The collection of Francis & Benjamin Standish was purchased by the London dealer Edward George Meek and was dispersed at Steven's auction rooms at Covent Garden in London.
To find out more about the collecting activities of Benjamin Standish I have researched the letters that he sent to the famous entomologist James Charles Dale of Glanvilles Wootton in Dorset. Dale spent all his adult life studying the different insect orders that are found in Britain. The Dale's correspondence and his diaries are kept in the library at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The Standish letters contain a wealth of information regarding extinct, rare and mythical British butterflies and moths, and are a time capsule of entomology in the early 19th century. Dale was not only a remarkable entomologist, he had the foresight to keep all of his correspondence for posterity, hundreds of letters to famous and lesser known entomologists. I would like to thank Kate Diston for allowing the access to these precious documents, the contents that I will reveal in a series of articles.
Benjamin Standish. The first letters to J.C. Dale. 1820.
In his first letter to Dale dated February 13, 1820, Benjamin Standish informed him that he had sent him a specimen of the beautiful Kentish Glory, Endromis versicolora that he had requested. This female specimen can still be seen in his collection today and was taken at Darenth Wood in Kent (Fig 1). E. versicolora disappeared from Kent by 1860, when its two famous collecting localities, Birch Wood and parts of Darenth Wood were cut down. Standish had also sent Dale a female of the rare Autumn Prominent, Ptilophora plumigera. He informed Dale that Samuel Stevens had bought a male from him for 30 shillings, a large sum at that time for a single specimen, about a £100 pounds in today's money.
Below. Figure 1. Endromis versicolora. The female (bottom). Darenth Wood, Kent. 1820. Benjamin Standish. Dale coll. OUMNH.
Below. Figure 2. Female of the Autumn (Plumed) Prominent, Ptilophora plumigera. Dale coll. OUMNH.
Dale had written to Joseph Standish requesting that one of his two sons accompany him to collect at Bedford in July. In a letter dated May 1, 1820, Dale learned from Benjamin that there was a little family dispute who should go to Bedford. Benjamin put his own credentials forward, he was the man that Dale had met in London at the Blue Boar Tavern, a stage coach stop with an adjacent coffee house. He mentioned to Dale that he had reset the entire collection of British and foreign insects for William Elford Leach at the British Museum and would be happy to set the insects he captured at Bedford.
The Reverend Charles Abbot and the Bedford oddities
Bedford and Clapham Park Wood, a few miles to the north of that town had been put firmly on the entomologist's map by the naturalist Reverend Charles Abbot (1761-1817). Abbot is remembered not only as the author of the very fine Flora Bedfordiensis (1798) but for adding the Chequered Skipper, Carterocephalus palaemon in 1798 to the British list. However, he is perhaps best known among British entomologists for the strange oddities that he captured. In late May 1803 at Clapham Park Wood he took a specimen of the Scarce Swallowtail, Iphiclides podalirius and a few days later he went to White Wood at Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire where he captured two rare immigrant butterflies, the Queen of Spain Fritillary, Issoria lathonia and a Bath White, Pontia daplidice. Nearly a hundred years before, the early Aurelian William Vernon (1666-1711) had recorded taking I. lathonia at White Wood in 1700 and a P. daplidice there in 1702. The latter specimen surviving in the Dalean collection, the oldest known extant set specimen in the world. The ancient White Wood survives today and is now Gamlingay Wood nature reserve. These were the more credible of Abbot's captures. At Clapham Park Wood where he had discovered C. palaemon, Abbot recorded the capture of two exotic skippers, Hesperia bucephalus = Hylephila phyleus and Pyrgus oileus. P.B.M. Allan writing in Talking of Moths (1943) suggested that someone was releasing butterflies in the woodland for Abbot to find and he pointed the finger at the disreputable dealer Plastead of Epping.
Releasing a few butterflies in a wood for another collector to find would be a pointless exercise, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. That person would either need to release a large amount of a particular species beforehand or would need to accompany the collector to the wood and discreetly release the butterfly, while the unsuspecting entomologist was busy, perhaps boxing an insect and to point out the butterfly, so that they could catch it. This planted method is said later to have been used by the Kentish buccaneers, but here we are not taking about several men but one George Parry of Canterbury who used to record his Continentals as British specimens in the Entomologist in the 1870s and then under aliases, write again to the journal to confirm his own captures that came forth from his breeding cages. He at times would send of a telegram to a collector who would unsuspectingly hurry down and together with Parry, they would go to look for the rare butterfly, only for the dealer to chose his moment to release a butterfly stupefied with chloroform from a small box, so the butterfly either landed on the ground or weakly took to the wing which was then easily captured, then the dealer was rewarded for his assiduous efforts.
No one in the literature has ever claimed that Abbot's captures emanated from his own breeding cages. It was no mean feat in 1820 to obtain the eggs or larvae of two Northern American Hesperiids, and one of them, P. oileus was found only in the southern American states but ranged across Mexico, Central America and parts of South America. Someone would have needed to have a wide range of contacts, it is known that Abbot corresponded with some of the great naturalists of the day. After his capture of I. podalirius he wrote to the eminent entomologist Adrian Hardy Haworth and stated that he had seen that species two or three times on previous occasions in the same woodland. Unless there was a colony of this dubious British species at Bedford, its release by someone accompanying him is most unlikely. If the butterfly was released beforehand, such a mobile insect would hardly remain in the confines of a small woodland for very long.
Dale referred to the Bedford naturalist as Dr Abbot, as he had been given a honary degree of Doctor of Divinity by his old university, New College Oxford. Abbot was elected a fellow of the prestigious Linnean society and the general opinion seems to be he was duped by someone else. At Bedford lived another entomologist, Mr Bucklow who is mentioned by Dale in his diary and correspondence. Bucklow living in such a small town as Bedford would have certainly had known Abbot and there is a strong possibility that he accompanied him on collecting trips.
Dale went to Bedford in 1817 to hunt for some of Abbot's rare insects, visiting Clapham Park Wood but perhaps not surprisingly did not capture anything special. After the death of Abbot in 1817 his collection that was kept in two large mahogany and glazed cases along with his notebooks were sold to Bucklow of the Swan Inn in Bedford. During his visit Dale was able to purchase Abbot's collection and notebooks from Bucklow and thus saved some the butterfly specimens and his journals for posterity. The P. daplidice, I. lathonia and I. podalirius (Fig 1-3) taken by Abbot in 1803 have survived with a few others in Dale's collection and these represent some of the earliest known examples of set British Butterflies. These historic butterflies are in poor condition and one wonders what happen to the two American skippers captured by Abbot and his series of Large Blues, Maculinea arion taken near Bedford, perhaps they were later dispensed with.
Below. Figure 3. Iphiclides podalirius captured by Charles Abbot at Clapham Park Wood, Bedfordshire. May 1803. Dale coll. OUMNH.
Below. Figure 4. Issoria lathonia. White Wood, Gamlingay. June 1803. Charles Abbot. Dale coll. OUMNH
Below. Figure 5. Pontia daplidice. White Wood, Gamlingay. June 1803. Charles Abbot. Dale coll. OUMNH.
.
The Bedfordshire colony of M. arion was discovered by Abbot in 1798. It speaks volumes that the more well known localities for M. arion had yet to be discovered and that vast tracts of the British Isles were yet to be explored for their insects. Entomologists at that time being rather thin on the ground. No wonder gentleman and scientific workers such as Dale did not at first suspect any fraudulent activities. Dale was very keen to add specimens of M. arion to his collection and went to Bedford in July 1819. He visited the locality where Abbot has taken his specimens of M. arion, the Mouse's Pasture at Bromham, three miles from Bedford and on July 14, he captured a female specimen but Dale records in his diary, it was a very bad one and this specimen must have been discarded at later date, probably after he had taken better specimens at Langport in Somerset. Dale also added that Mouse's Pasture was not far from Lord Tavistock who had two M. arion from Dr Abbot.
The previous day, July 15, 1819, Dale had visited Clapham Park Wood, but again found none of Abbot's rarities. There were plenty of Marbled Whites, Melanargia galathea and he took the pretty Geometer the Orange Moth Angerona prunaria, a damselfly of the genus Agrion in great plenty and from Bucklow he got a pair of beetles from the Tenebrionidae family that had been bred.
In a letter dated July 8, 1820, Benjamin Standish told Dale that he heard nothing of Mr Bucklow since he had left him at Bedford. He hoped that Dale had a safe journey home from Bedford where they had collected together and that he was not a little fearful for his boxed set insects with the " braces" upon them. At that period collectors used stiff cut cards to hold the wings in place instead of setting paper. Standish told Dale that he meant to return to Bedford on July 15 to look again for the M. arion but only if the weather improved. Standish had beaten a few small larvae of E. versicolora from birch trees, but they had all died, but he had been back to Darenth Wood to collect more and would supply Dale with a fine male.
Joseph Standish wrote to Dale on the July 11, 1820 that he was sorry that the collecting trip with his son Benjamin to Bedford did not turn out more favourable. Dale had hoped to take M. arion and least some of Dr Abbot's rarities. Joseph Standish sent a box of insects that included 11 bred Holly Blue, Celastrina argiolus in exchange for specimens for the now extinct and always scarce Mazarine Blue, Cyaniris semiargus that Dale had captured in his meadows adjoining the manor house at Glanvilles Wootton. In a letter dated July 22, 1820 Joseph Standish sent Dale another list of insects for sale and of interest is another male E. versicolora that he had taken himself in February at Dahn Wood that was probably situated in Kent or perhaps Surrey. Nearly all the insects in the box Joseph Standish was sending to Dale were either captured by himself at Dahn Wood or the famous collecting ground Coombe (Combe) wood at Kingston in Surrey. The most highly priced specimen was a scarce Buprestid beetle at 8 shillings.
The images used in this article were taken by me at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. OUMNH and remain their copyright.
Next. A Fenland Day 1820. Benjamin Standish at Whittlesea Mere in search of the Large Copper, Lycaena dispar.