|
William De Alwis
William De Alwis Seneviratne (1842–1916) was a Ceylonese artist and entomologist. With his brother George (dates unknown), William made a lasting contribution to the knowledge of the lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) of Ceylon. The brothers' father, Haramanis de Alwis Seneviratne (1792–1894) was a botanical illustrator who worked at the Botanical Gardens in Ceylon at Kalutara between 1818–1822 and Peradeniya from 1822–1861. He illustrated over 2,000 plants. William was appointed to succeed him to continue the work as a botanical artist. George Thwaites, the Director of the Botanical Garden at Peradeniya between 1849 and 1879, who was impressed by the de Alwis brothers' botanical drawings, recommended to W H Gregory, the Governor of Ceylon, that they should draw from nature the butterflies and moths of Ceylon. Thwaites supervised the drawings, many of which were illustrations of specimens that he had collected himself. The drawings were accurate and later used by a num ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ceylon
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and southeast of the Arabian Sea; it is separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. Sri Lanka shares a maritime border with India and Maldives. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is its legislative capital, and Colombo is its largest city and financial centre. Sri Lanka has a population of around 22 million (2020) and is a multinational state, home to diverse cultures, languages, and ethnicities. The Sinhalese are the majority of the nation's population. The Tamils, who are a large minority group, have also played an influential role in the island's history. Other long established groups include the Moors, the Burghers, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Morrison Reid Henry
George Morrison Reid Henry (17 February 1891, Sri Lanka – June 1983, England) was an entomologist and ornithologist in Sri Lanka. He was born at Goatfell Estate, Kandapola, Sri Lanka where his father, Charles Reid Henry, managed tea estates. He was one of eleven children and was educated at home by his older sisters. He showed an early talent as an artist and obtained his first job as a draughtsman and a laboratory assistant in the Ceylon Company of Pearl Fishers in 1907 at the age of 16. In 1910 he became a draughtsman at the Colombo Museum and was trained by Dr. Joseph Pearson, Director of the Colombo Museum, who was a zoologist and marine biologist. In July 1913 he was promoted to the newly created post of Assistant in Systematic Entomology at the Colombo Museum, a post he held until his retirement in 1946. George Henry married Olive Hobday in September 1917. His elder son, Bruce Charles Reid Henry, was born on 22 July 1918 and his younger son David Morrison Reid Henry David ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sri Lankan Academics
Shri (; , ) is a Sanskrit term denoting resplendence, wealth and prosperity, primarily used as an honorific. The word is widely used in South and Southeast Asian languages such as Marathi, Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian), Javanese, Balinese, Sinhala, Thai, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Nepali, Malayalam, Kannada, Sanskrit, Pali, Khmer, and also among Philippine languages. It is usually transliterated as ''Sri'', ''Sree'', ''Shri'', Shiri, Shree, ''Si'', or ''Seri'' based on the local convention for transliteration. The term is used in Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia as a polite form of address equivalent to the English "Mr." in written and spoken language, but also as a title of veneration for deities or as honorific title for local rulers. Shri is also another name for Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, while a ''yantra'' or a mystical diagram popularly used to worship her is called Shri Yantra. Etymology Monier-Williams Dictionary gives the meaning of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sinhalese People
Sinhalese people ( si, සිංහල ජනතාව, Sinhala Janathāva) are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group native to the island of Sri Lanka. They were historically known as Hela people ( si, හෙළ). They constitute about 75% of the Sri Lankan population and number more than 16.2 million. The Sinhalese identity is based on language, cultural heritage and nationality. The Sinhalese people speak Sinhala, an insular Indo-Aryan language, and are predominantly Theravada Buddhists, although a minority of Sinhalese follow branches of Christianity and other religions. Since 1815, they were broadly divided into two respective groups: The 'Up-country Sinhalese' in the central mountainous regions, and the 'Low-country Sinhalese' in the coastal regions; although both groups speak the same language, they are distinguished as they observe different cultural customs. According to the Mahavamsa and the Dipavamsa, a third–fifth century treatise written in Pali by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lepidopterists
Lepidopterology ()) is a branch of entomology concerning the scientific study of moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies. Someone who studies in this field is a lepidopterist or, archaically, an aurelian. Origins Post-Renaissance, the rise of the "lepidopterist" can be attributed to the expanding interest in science, nature and the surroundings. When Linnaeus wrote the tenth edition of the ''Systema Naturae'' in 1758, there was already "a substantial body of published work on Lepidopteran natural history" (Kristensen, 1999). These included: * ''Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum'' – Thomas Mouffet (1634) * ''Metamorphosis Naturalis'' – Jan Goedart (1662–67 ) * ''Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium'' – Maria S. Merian (1705), whose work included illustrated accounts of European Lepidoptera * ''Historia Insectorum'' – John Ray (1710) * ''Papilionum Brittaniae icones'' – James Petiver (1717) History Scholars 1758–1900 was the era of the ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botanical Illustrators
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word (''botanē'') meaning "pasture", "herbs" "grass", or "fodder"; is in turn derived from (), "to feed" or "to graze". Traditionally, botany has also included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists respectively, with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress. Nowadays, botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants (including approximately 369,000 species of flowering plants), and approximately 20,000 are bryophytes. Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early humans to identify – and later cultivate – edible, medici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
19th-century Sri Lankan Painters
The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 (Roman numerals, MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 (Roman numerals, MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium. The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolitionism, abolished in much of Europe and the Americas. The Industrial Revolution, First Industrial Revolution, though it began in the late 18th century, expanding beyond its British homeland for the first time during this century, particularly remaking the economies and societies of the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Northern Italy, and the Northeastern United States. A few decades later, the Second Industrial Revolution led to ever more massive urbanization and much higher levels of productivity, profit, and prosperity, a pattern that continued into the 20th century. The Gunpowder empires, Islamic gunpowder empires fell into decline and European imperialism brought much of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and almost ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
People From British Ceylon
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1916 Deaths
Events Below, the events of the First World War have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 1 – The British Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion, using blood that had been stored and cooled. * January 9 – WWI: Gallipoli Campaign: The last British troops are evacuated from Gallipoli, as the Ottoman Empire prevails over a joint British and French operation to capture Constantinople. * January 10 – WWI: Erzurum Offensive: Russia defeats the Ottoman Empire. * January 12 – The Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, part of the British Empire, is established in present-day Tuvalu and Kiribati. * January 13 – WWI: Battle of Wadi: Ottoman Empire forces defeat the British, during the Mesopotamian campaign in modern-day Iraq. * January 29 – WWI: Paris is bombed by German zeppelins. * January 31 – WWI: An attack is planned on Verdun, France. February * February 9 – 6.00 p.m. – Tristan Tz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1842 Births
__NOTOC__ Year 184 ( CLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Eggius and Aelianus (or, less frequently, year 937 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 184 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place China * The Yellow Turban Rebellion and Liang Province Rebellion break out in China. * The Disasters of the Partisan Prohibitions ends. * Zhang Jue leads the peasant revolt against Emperor Ling of Han of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Heading for the capital of Luoyang, his massive and undisciplined army (360,000 men), burns and destroys government offices and outposts. * June – Ling of Han places his brother-in-law, He Jin, in command of the imperial army and sends them to attack the Yellow Turban rebels. * Winter – Zha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural History Museum, London
The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Natural History Museum's main frontage, however, is on Cromwell Road. The museum is home to life and earth science specimens comprising some 80 million items within five main collections: botany, entomology, mineralogy, palaeontology and zoology. The museum is a centre of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. Given the age of the institution, many of the collections have great historical as well as scientific value, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin. The museum is particularly famous for its exhibition of dinosaur skeletons and ornate architecture—sometimes dubbed a ''cathedral of nature''—both exemplified by the large ''Diplodocus'' cast that domina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_1938.jpg "Click for more on -> People From British Ceylon")
