Francis Walker (entomologist)

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Francis Walker. Note the Brewster stereoscopic viewer.

Francis Walker (31 July 1809 – 5 October 1874) was an English entomologist. He was born in Southgate, London, on 31 July 1809 and died at Wanstead, England on 5 October 1874. He was one of the most prolific authors in entomology, and stirred controversy during his later life as his publications resulted in a huge number of junior synonyms.

Walker was contracted by the British Museum between June 1848 and late 1873 to catalogue their insects (except Coleoptera). Walker added an immense amount of material to the collections of the British Museum and wrote over 300 scientific papers and notes. He is best known for his catalogues of Orthoptera, Neuroptera, Hemiptera, Diptera, Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera. Collaborating with Alexander Henry Haliday, a lifelong friend, he was one of the first students of the Chalcidoidea. He was also a close friend of John Curtis. Walker was a fellow of the Entomological Society. Walker's specimens are in the Natural History Museum, London; Hope Department of Entomology, University of Oxford; the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin; Zoologische Staatssammlung München and the School of Medicine, Cairo, Egypt.

Family and childhood[]

Francis Walker was the son of John Walker of Arnos Grove, who was a fellow of the Royal Society, the Linnean Society and the Royal Horticultural Society. Born into a wealthy and educated family, Francis spent the years 1816 (when he was seven years old) to 1820 (when he was eleven) in Switzerland at Geneva, Lucerne and Vevey where the family party was joined by Madame de Staël, the poet Lord Byron and some Swiss naturalists gathered around Nicolas Théodore de Saussure. With his brother Henry (1825–1892), Francis collected butterflies on an ascent of Mount Pilatus in 1818 and so was an entomologist at age nine. In 1840 Walker married Mary Elizabeth Ford. He lived at Arnos Grove and relied on family money for his main income.

In 1834, Walker took up the editorship of the Entomological Magazine unpaid for one year. In 1837, he began working on a contract basis for the British Museum where he remained until 1863. ^[1]

Recreation[]

Walker was a traveller with a liking for mountains. His known trips are:

• 1830 – An extended trip to France with the entomologist John Curtis establishing a lifelong friendship. They visited Fontainebleau Montpellier, Nantes and Vaucluse, sightseeing and collecting insects, particularly Satyridae. The trip ended in Jersey.
• 1836 – A three-month collecting trip to Lapland with William Christy, Jr. and W.D. Hooker.
• 1848 – Thanet
• 1849 – With his new bride Elizabeth May a summer in Switzerland. They also went to the Isle of Wight.
• 1857 – Collecting and visiting museums in Calais, Rouen, Paris, Strasbourg, Aix (for fossil insects), Baden-Baden, Heidelberg, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Mainz, Cologne, Brussels, and Antwerp. Most of the time was spent in the Black Forest.
• 1861 – North Devon
• 1863 – In the Lake District
• 1865 – North Wales and Ireland but most of 1865 was spent on the continent, in Paris, Geneva, Lucerne, Interlaken and Altdorf. He again ascended Mount Pilatus and went to Mürren, Kandersteg, Oeschinen See and climbed to the Gemmi Pass.
• 1867 – Col de Voza, Mer de Glace, the Tête Noire Pass on the way from Martigny to Chamonix, Sion, Great St Bernard Pass, Saint-Maurice, Villeneuve and Geneva.
• 1868 – Isle of Man, Holyhead, North Wales including Llanberis.
• 1870 – Llanberis and North Wales.
• 1872 – Rome, Pisa, Lucca, Florence, Naples, Sorrento, Capri, Milan, Venice, Lake Como, Lake Maggiore.
• 1874 – Land's End and Scilly Isles.

Major works[]

• Monographia Chalciditum. Hypolitus Balliére, 219, Regent Street, London, J. B. Balliére, 13, Rue d' École de Médecine, Paris, J. and G. Weigel, Leipsig (Leipzig, Germany)(1839)
• Insecta Britannica Diptera 3 vols. London (1851–1856)

Different views of Walker[]

Caricature of Francis Walker by A. G. Butler (1890)

Walker is notable in the present time for the large number of synonymous taxa he described. A careless taxonomist by today's standards, he often gave more than one name to the same species. In this respect, however, he was no worse than many entomologists of his time; what makes for the more common occurrence of Walker's taxa in synonymy is the sheer volume of his work.

An unsigned obituary began "More than twenty years too late for his scientific reputation, and after having done an amount of injury almost inconceivable in its immensity, Francis Walker has passed from among us".^[2] Edward Newman, in contrast described him as the "most voluminous and most industrious writer on Entomology this country has ever produced" and said of him "I never met anyone who possessed more correct, more diversified, or more general information, or who imparted that information to others with greater readiness and kindness."^[3]

Kenneth G.V. Smith wrote:^[4]

[Walker's] 'Catalogues of Insects in the British Museum Collections' will always stand as a tribute to his industry. Walker (1836) also described the Diptera from Captain P. P. King's collection made on the first surveying voyage of Adventure and Beagle. Fortunately, many of his descriptions of Darwin's insects will endure because they were of little known groups from little worked regions and most of his types are still in the British Museum (Natural History). For a recent balanced account of this remarkable man see Graham (1979).^[5]

Publication list[]

See also[]

• Category:Taxa named by Francis Walker

References[]

General references[]

External links[]

• Plates from Insecta Britannica Diptera
• Internet Archive has digitised versions of Insecta Britannica Diptera (all three published volumes) and List of the ... Homopterous Insects in the ... Museum. (1852) Volume 4; List of the Specimens of the Hymenopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum. (1846–48) pt. I. Chalcidites.--pt. II. Chalcidites. Additional species and Catalogue of the Specimens of Neuropterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum. (1852–53) pt. I. Phryganides. Perlides.--pt. II. Sialid. Nemopterides.--pt. III. Termitid. Ephemerid.--pt. IV. Odonata

— and

• Characters of Undescribed Lepidoptera Heterocera London, Janson (1869)
• with John Edward Gray Catalogue of the Specimens of Dermaptera Saltatoria and Supplement of the Blattariæ in the Collection of the British Museum. London, printed by order of the Trustees of the British Museum (1869–1870 [1]
• 1869–1870 Volume 1 [71]
• 1869–1870 Volume 2 [71]
• 1869–1870 Volume 3 [71]
• Universal Chalcidoid Database pdfs of Walker's publications on Chalcidoids.
• EOL Encyclopedia of Life Taxa described by Francis Walker. Complete. Sometimes has very detailed links to older literature.
• Systema Dipterorum Nomenclator Full list of Diptera taxa described by Francis Walker
• Gaedike, R.; Groll, E. K. & Taeger, A. 2012: Bibliography of the entomological literature from the beginning until 1863: online database – version 1.0 – Senckenberg Deutsches Entomologisches Institut.