William Swainson | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1789-10-08)8 October 1789 St MaryNewington, London, United Kingdom |
| Died | 6 December 1855(1855-12-06) (aged 66) Fern Grove,Hutt Valley, New Zealand |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Known for | Prolificillustrative works of natural history. NotedQuinarian. |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Ornithology,malacology,conchology,entomology,natural history |
| Notable students | Sir Walter Buller |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | Swainson |
| Notes | |
Emigrated to New Zealand in 1841 | |
William SwainsonFLS,FRS (8 October 1789 – 6 December 1855), was an Englishornithologist,malacologist,conchologist,entomologist and artist.
Swainson was born in Dover Place, St MaryNewington, London, the eldest son ofJohn Timothy Swainson, an original fellow of theLinnean Society.[1] He was a cousin of the amateurbotanistIsaac Swainson.[2] His father's family originated inLancashire, and both his grandfather and father held high posts in Her Majesty's Customs, his father becoming Collector atLiverpool.
William, whose formal education was curtailed because of animpediment in his speech, joined the Liverpool Customs as a junior clerk at the age of 14.[3] He joined the ArmyCommissariat and touredMalta andSicily.[3][4] He studied theichthyology of westernSicily and in 1815 was forced by ill health to return to England where he subsequently retired on half-pay. William followed in his father's footsteps to become a fellow of theLinnean Society in 1815.[3]
In 1806 he accompanied the English explorerHenry Koster toBrazil. Koster had lived in Brazil for some years and had become famous for his bookTravels in Brazil (1816).[5] There he met Dr.Grigori Ivanovitch Langsdorff, also an explorer of Brazil and a RussianConsul General. They did not spend a long time on shore because of a revolution, but Swainson returned to England in 1818 in his words "a bee loaded with honey", with a collection of over 20,000insects, 1,200 species of plants, drawings of 120 species offish, and about 760bird skins.
As with manyVictorian scientists, Swainson was also a member of many learned societies, including theWernerian Society ofEdinburgh. He was elected a fellow of theRoyal Society after his return from Brazil on 14 December 1820,[3][6] and married his first wife Mary Parkes in 1823,[4] with whom he had four sons (William John, George Frederick, Henry Gabriel, and Edwin Newcombe) and a daughter (Mary Frederica). His wife Mary died in 1835.
Swainson remarried in 1840 to Ann Grasby, andemigrated to New Zealand in 1841. Their daughter,Edith Stanway Swainson, marriedArthur Halcombe in 1863.[7] Swainson was involved inproperty management and natural history-related publications from 1841 to 1855, andforestry-related investigations inTasmania,New South Wales, andVictoria from 1851 to 1853. Swainson died at Fern Grove,Lower Hutt, New Zealand, on 6 December 1855.
Swainson was at times quite critical of the works of others and, later in life, others in turn became quite critical of him.
Apart from the common and scientific names of many species, it is for the quality of his illustrations that he is best remembered. His friendWilliam Elford Leach, head of zoology at theBritish Museum, encouraged him to experiment withlithography for his bookZoological Illustrations (1820–1823). Swainson became the first illustrator and naturalist to use lithography, which was a relatively cheap means of reproduction and did not require an engraver. He began publishing many illustrated works, mostly serially. Subscribers received and paid for fascicles, small sections of the books, as they came out, so that the cash flow was constant and could be reinvested in the preparation of subsequent parts. As book orders arrived, the monochrome lithographs were hand-coloured, according to colour reference images, known as ‘pattern plates’, which were produced by Swainson himself. It was his early adoption of this new technology and his natural skill in illustration that in large part led to his fame.[8]
When Leach was forced to resign from theBritish Museum due to ill health, Swainson applied to replace him, but the post was given toJohn George Children. Swainson continued with his writing, the most influential of which was the second volume ofFauna Boreali-Americana (1831), which he wrote withJohn Richardson. This series (1829–1837) was the first illustrated zoological study to be funded in part by the British government.[9] He also produced a second series ofZoological Illustrations (1832–1833), three volumes ofWilliam Jardine'sNaturalist's Library, and eleven volumes ofDionysius Lardner'sCabinet Cyclopedia; he had signed a contract with London publisherLongman to produce fourteen illustrated volumes of 300 pages in this series, one to be produced quarterly.[8]
In 1819,William Sharp Macleay published his ideas of theQuinarian system ofbiological classification, and Swainson soon became a noted and outspoken proponent.[10] The Quinarian system later fell out of favour, giving way to the rising popularity of the geographical theory ofHugh Edwin Strickland.[10] Swainson was overworked by Dionysius Lardner, the publisher of theCabinet Cyclopaedia,[11] and both Swainson and Macleay were derided for their support of the Quinarian system. Both proponents left Britain; Swainson emigrated to New Zealand and Macleay to Australia.[12] An American visiting Australasia in the 1850s heard to his surprise that both Macleay and Swainson were living there, and imagined that they had been exiled to theAntipodes
'for the great crime of burdening zoology with a false though much laboured theory which has thrown so much confusion into the subject of its classification and philosophical study'.[13][14]
In 1839, Swainson became a member of the committee of theNew Zealand Company and of theChurch of England committee for the appointment of abishop to New Zealand, bought land inWellington, and gave up scientific literary work.[4] He married his second wife, Anne Grasby, in 1840.[15] He was apparently the first Fellow of the Royal Society to move to New Zealand.[16] He was later made an honorary Fellow of theRoyal Society of Tasmania.[17][18]
Together with most of his children from his first marriage, they sailed for New Zealand in theJane,[19] reaching Wellington in the summer of 1841. The trip was not without incident, as the boat suffered damage en route and was in such a poor state that there was legal action on arrival.[20][21] Swainson purchased 1,100 acres (4 km2) in theHutt Valley from the New Zealand Company, and established his estate of "Hawkshead".[22] Not coincidentally, this name was shared by an ancestral home of the Swainson family inHawkshead, Lancashire, which was the birthplace ofIsaac Swainson. After a few months, the New Zealand estate was claimed by aMāori chief,Taringakuri, which led to years of uncertainty and threat. He was an officer in amilitia against the Māoris in 1846. During these times he was largely dependent on his half-pay.
In 1851, Swainson sailed toSydney and took the post of Botanical Surveyor with theVictoria Government in 1852, after being invited byLieutenant-GovernorCharles La Trobe to study local trees. He finished his report in 1853 in which he claimed a grand total of 1,520 species and varieties ofEucalyptidae. He identified so many species ofCasuarina that he ran out of names for them.
While having quite some expertise inzoology, his untrained foray intobotany was not well received.William Jackson Hooker wrote toFerdinand von Mueller:
In my life I think I never read such a series of trash and nonsense. There is a man who left this country with the character of a first rate naturalist (though with many eccentricities) and of a very first-rate Natural History artist and he goes to Australia and takes up the subject of Botany, of which he is as ignorant as a goose.[17][18]
Joseph Maiden described Swainson's efforts as "an exhibition of reckless species-making that, as far as I know stands unparalleled in the annals of botanical literature."[17][18]
He had studied the flora of New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania before his return to New Zealand in 1854 to live at Fern Grove in the Hutt, where he died the following year.[4]
In 1856, a poem was written by the New Zealand poetWilliam Golder in his memory.[23] His standard botanical abbreviation isSwainson.[24]
William Swainson is frequently credited with having the plant genusSwainsona named after him, and specificallySturt's desert pea, the official floral emblem ofSouth Australia. Although he did botanical work in this region,Swainsona is named for his cousinIsaac Swainson (1746–1812), who never travelled to this region.
Many birds retain a common name after Swainson, several of which were named by famous naturalists of the period. Many species or subspecies retain his name, although many of his own species were later discredited or merged with others.
Many of these works were reprinted, or present in serial publication.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
"Swainson, William (1789-1855)" .Dictionary of National Biography. 1885–1900.
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