Enrico Adelelmo Brunetti (22 May 1862 – 21 January 1927) was a British musician and entomologist. He specialized in the Diptera and worked for many years in

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

. Brunetti was born in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. His mother was from Bath, Somersetshire and his father, of Italian origin came from Fossombrone, Rome, was a confectioner and importer of wines who ran a restaurant in South Kensington. From a young age, Brunetti showed interest in music composition and was trained by

Giacomo Ferrari Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari (baptised 2 April 1763 – 2 December 1842)Di Marco (1996) and Slonimsky and Kuhn (2001) give only the date of baptism. A memorial plaque in Rovereto, Ferrari's birthplace, gives his year of birth as 1763 (see Lapide St ...

and Enrico Mattei. A musician by profession, Brunetti was a composer for

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

and

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a musica ...

. He played piano at the Empire, Islington around 1901 and in bands at Plymouth and Llandrindod Wells around 1902 and was a bandmaster in 1903 at Harwich. He went to India as a musical conductor for Tivoli Theatre in Calcutta and for sometime worked with Bandman Opera Company travelling to Singapore and Java. He spent his free time studying entomology, especially Diptera. In 1904 he made a musical tour of the Dutch East Indies, China and Japan making extensive insect collections on his travels. He later settled in

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comm ...

where he stayed for 17 years. He played piano at the Globe Opera House, Great Eastern and Grand Hotels in Calcutta. He had strict rules and refused to play on Sundays or after the playing of "God Save the King." Aside from music, he took an interest in stamp collecting. He hated the noise of Calcutta and especially detested the cawing of crows, taking out his collector's gun to shoot crows every evening and morning. He spent his summers in Darjeeling and wrote many papers in the Records of the Indian Museum. Brunetti briefly worked as an Assistant Superintendent in charge at the Indian Museum working on honoraria ranging from 30 to 300 GBP a year. At the suggestion of Thomas Nelson Annandale he was sanctioned leave to go to England to revise his manuscript on Indian Diptera using the material at the British Museum. For this task the Government of India approved 300 GBP for the period of a year. He described species without dissection of the genitalia and had little interest in the biology of living insects. In 1921 he returned to

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, spending his summers in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

where The Imperial Bureau of Entomology employed him to identify specimens. Winters were spent in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

and

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

. He worked for long periods on British Diptera. He fell ill during a winter in Paris in 1926-27 and died in a hospital in London. Before his death, Brunetti gave his collection of 80,000 specimens, and his library to the Natural History Museum. This museum also his manuscripts:- 56 letters and two bound manuscript volumes regarding

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

n and

Australasia Australasia is a region that comprises Australia, New Zealand and some neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term is used in a number of different contexts, including geopolitically, physiogeographically, philologically, and ecolo ...

n Diptera. The Psychodid genus ''Brunettia'' was named by Annandale in Brunetti's honour in 1910.

Works

This is a partial list. For a complete list see Smart (1945): * Revision of the Oriental Tipulidae with descriptions of new species. ''Rec. Indian Mus.'' 6: 231-314 (1911). * New Oriental Nemocera. ''Rec. Indian Mus''. 4: 259-316 (1911). * Annotated catalog of Oriental Culicidae-supplement. ''Rec. Indian Mus.'' 4: 403-517 (1912). * Critical review of "genera" in Culicidae. Rec. Indian Mus. 10: 15-73 (1914). * Revision of the Oriental

Tipulidae Crane fly is a common name referring to any member of the insect family Tipulidae. Cylindrotominae, Limoniinae, and Pediciinae have been ranked as subfamilies of Tipulidae by most authors, though occasionally elevated to family rank. In the m ...

with descriptions of new species. Part II. ''Rec. Indian Mus.'' 15: 255-340 (1918). * Catalogue of Oriental and South Asiatic Nemocera. ''Rec. Indian Mus.'' 17: 1-300 Brunetti, E. (1920). * New Oriental Diptera, I. ''Rec. Indian Mus.'' 7: 445-513 (1912). * New and little-known Cyrtidae (Diptera). ''Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist''. (9)18(107): 561-606 . (1926). He was also the main contributor to ''

The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma ''The Fauna of British India'' (short title) with long titles including ''The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma'', and ''The Fauna of British India Including the Remainder of the Oriental Region'' is a series of scientific books th ...

''. writing the parts. * Diptera 1. Brachycera (1920) - 401 p - 4 pl * Diptera 2. Nematocera (1912) - xxviii + 581 p - 12 pl * Diptera 3. Pipunculidae, Syrphidae, Conopidae,

Oestridae Botflies, also known as warble flies, heel flies, and gadflies, are a family of flies known as the Oestridae. Their larvae are internal parasites of mammals, some species growing in the host's flesh and others within the gut. ''Dermatobia homin ...

(1923) 424 p - 83 fig - 5 pl .

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brunetti, Enrico 1862 births 1927 deaths English composers Entomologists from London Dipterists Naturalists of British India English people of Italian descent