Missionaries tatsienlu Four Westerners in Tatsienlu, 1890, photographed by Prince Henri d’Orléans

Félix Biet (1838 in

Langres Langres () is a commune in France, commune in northeastern France. It is a Subprefectures in France, subprefecture of the Departments of France, department of Haute-Marne, in the Regions of France, region of Grand Est. History As the capital o ...

Haute-Marne Haute-Marne (; English: Upper Marne) is a department in the Grand Est region of Northeastern France. Named after the river Marne, its prefecture is Chaumont. In 2019, it had a population of 172,512.Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d'Or Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d'Or () is a commune in the Metropolis of Lyon in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in eastern France.missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

from Paris Foreign Missions Society and naturalist.

Life

Biet was born in 1838. He was ordained as a priest in 1864. He was next sent to Tatsienlu in Tibet (called Dartsedo by Tibetans) as a missionary and he became the Bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of

Thibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Tamang ...

, now Diocese of Kangding, in 1898. Félix Biet collected

butterflies Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the Order (biology), order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The ...

for

Charles Oberthür Charles Oberthür (14 September 1845 – 1 June 1924) was a French amateur entomologist specializing in lepidoptera. Biography Charles Oberthür was born in Rennes, the son of the printer François-Charles Oberthür and Marie Hamelin, and brot ...

who dedicated three new species ('' Thecla bieti'', '' Pantoporia bieti'' and ''

Anthocharis bieti ''Anthocharis bieti'' is a butterfly which has a range that is confined to China. Subspecies ''A. b. tsangpoana'' was described from Tsangpo, Tibet. "''A. bieti'' Oberth. from West China (Ta-tsien-lu), has a white upperside, a black apical area ...

'') to him. Alphonse Milne-Edwards described the

Chinese mountain cat The Chinese mountain cat (''Felis bieti''), also known as Chinese desert cat and Chinese steppe cat, is a small wild cat endemic to western China that has been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 2002, as the effective population si ...

('' Felis bieti'') and the

black snub-nosed monkey The black-and-white snub-nosed monkey (''Rhinopithecus bieti''), also known as the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, is a large black and white primate that lives only in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan, where it is known to the locals as the Yun ...

, ('' Rhinopithecus bieti''), the latter collected and sent by

Jean-André Soulié Jean-André is a French masculine given name. It may refer to: * Jean-André Cuoq (1821–1898), French philologist * Jean-André Deluc (1727–1817), Swiss geologist and meteorologist * Jean-André Mongez (1750–1788), French priest and mineral ...

. The Biet's laughingthrush a Chinese

endemic species Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

was another discovery, named by Émile Oustalet in 1897. Those natural history collections from

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...

and

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

are in the

National Museum of Natural History The National Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. In 2021, with 7 ...

in Paris. He was succeeded by Pierre-Philippe Giraudeau.

References

*Adrien Launay (1916), '' Mémorial de la Société des missions étrangères'' *Françoise Fauconnet-Buzelin (2012), ''Les Martyrs oubliés du Tibet. Chronique d'une rencontre manquée (1855-1940)'', éd. du Cerf, coll. Petit Cerf, Paris, 2012, 656 pages {{DEFAULTSORT:Biet, Felix 1838 births 1901 deaths People from Langres French entomologists French ornithologists French Roman Catholic missionaries Roman Catholic missionaries in China Roman Catholic missionaries in Tibet Roman Catholic missionaries in Sichuan Paris Foreign Missions Society missionaries French expatriates in China

Life

See also

References