John Stackhouse (1742 – 22 November 1819) was an
English botanist, primarily interested in
spermatophytes
A spermatophyte (; ), also known as phanerogam (taxon Phanerogamae) or phaenogam (taxon Phaenogamae), is any plant that produces seeds, hence the alternative name seed plant. Spermatophytes are a subset of the embryophytes or land plants. They inc ...
,
algae
Algae ( , ; : alga ) are any of a large and diverse group of photosynthetic, eukaryotic organisms. The name is an informal term for a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from ...
and
mycology
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans, including as a source for tinder, traditional medicine, food, and entheogens, a ...
. He was born in
Probus, Cornwall, and built
Acton Castle, above Stackhouse Cove, Cornwall, in order to further his studies about the propagation of algae from their spores. He was the author of ''Nereis Britannica; or a Botanical Description of British Marine Plants, in Latin and English, accompanied with Drawings from Nature'' (1797).
Personal life
The second son of William Stackhouse, D.D. (d. 1771), rector of
St. Erme
St Erme ( kw, Egloserm (village), Pluw Erm (parish)) is a civil parish and village in Cornwall, England, in the United Kingdom. The parish of St Erme, has a population of approximately 1200. This had increased to 1,363 in 2011 Trispen is a smal ...
, Cornwall, and nephew of
Thomas Stackhouse, he was born at
Trehane, Probus, in Cornwall. On 20 June 1758 he matriculated at
Exeter College, Oxford
(Let Exeter Flourish)
, old_names = ''Stapeldon Hall''
, named_for = Walter de Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter
, established =
, sister_college = Emmanuel College, Cambridge
, rector = Sir Richard Trainor
...
, and was a Fellow of the college from 1761 to 1764. On succeeding his relative, Mrs. Grace Percival, sister of Sir William Pendarves, in the Pendarves estates in 1763, he resigned his fellowship, and, after travelling abroad for two or three years, settled on his newly acquired property. In 1804 he resigned the estate to his eldest surviving son, and retired to
Bath
Bath may refer to:
* Bathing, immersion in a fluid
** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body
** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe
* Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities
Plac ...
.
On 21 April 1773 Stackhouse married Susanna Acton, only daughter and heir of Edward Acton of
Acton Scott,
Shropshire
Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to ...
and they had four sons and three daughters. The eldest son, John, died young. The second,
Edward William, assumed the surname of Pendarves in 1815. The third son, Thomas Pendarves, succeeded to the estate of Acton Scott, and assumed the additional surname of Acton in 1834.
Stackhouse died at his house at Edgar Buildings, Bath, on 22 November 1819. His name was commemorated by
Sir James Edward Smith in the Australian plant genus ''
Stackhousia''.
Works
From an early period Stackhouse devoted himself to botany, and especially to the study of
seaweed
Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of ''Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ke ...
s and of the plants mentioned by
Theophrastus
Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routle ...
. About 1775 he erected
Acton Castle at
Perranuthnoe to pursue his researches. He was one of the early fellows of the
Linnean Society
The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...
, elected in 1795.
Stackhouse's major works were ''Nereis Britannica'', ''Illustrationes Theophrasti'', and his edition of Theophrastus's ''Historia Plantarum''. The ''Nereis Britannica'', which was issued in parts, deals mainly with the brown algal
seawrack
Wrack is part of the common names of several species of seaweed in the family Fucaceae. It may also refer more generally to any seaweeds or seagrasses that wash up on beaches and may accumulate in the wrack zone.
It consists largely of specie ...
s or fuci, and was based on his own researches, discussions with
James Edward Smith, comments on proofs by friends
Thomas Jenkinson Woodward
Thomas Jenkinson Woodward (1745–1820) was an English botanist.
Life
Born 23 Feb 1745, he was a native of Huntingdon. His parents died when he was quite young, leaving him, however, financially independent. He was educated at Eton College and Cla ...
, Dawson Turner
Dawson Turner (18 October 1775 – 21 June 1858) was an English banker, botanist and antiquary. He specialized in the botany of cryptogams and was the father-in-law of the botanist William Jackson Hooker.
Life
Turner was the son of J ...
, Dr. Samuel Goodenough, Lilly Wigg
Lilly Wigg (25 December 1749 – 28 March 1828) was an English botanist.
Life
Wigg was born in Smallburgh, Norfolk, on 25 December 1749, the son of a shoemaker. He received a good village education, and was brought up to his father's trade, but m ...
, John Pitchford, and Colonel Thomas Velley
Thomas Velley (15 May 1748 – 8 June 1806) was an English botanist.
Life
Born at Chipping Ongar, Essex, on 15 May 1748, he was son of the Rev. Thomas Velley of the town.FamilySearch. England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975. He matricula ...
and the herbaria of
Dillenius,
Bobart, and
Linnæus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
.
The complete work, which was printed privately and published in folio at Bath, with Latin and English text and twelve coloured plates by the author, appeared as part I in 1795, part II in 1797 and part III in 1801.
An enlarged edition, with twenty-four coloured plates, was published at Bath in 1801, in folio; and another at Oxford in 1816, in quarto, with Latin text only and twenty plates. The ''Illustrationes Theophrasti in usum Botanicorum præcipue peregrinantium'', Oxford, 1811, contains a lexicon and three catalogues giving the Linnæan names of the plants mentioned. The edition of ''Theophrasti Eresii de Historia Plantarum libri decem'', "perhaps the most unsatisfactory" ever published (according to
Benjamin Daydon Jackson
Benjamin Daydon Jackson (3 April 1846 – 12 October 1927) was a pioneering botanist and taxonomer who wrote the first volume of ''Index Kewensis'' to include all the flowering plants.
Biography
Jackson was the eldest child of Benjamin Daydo ...
, ''Guide to the Literature of Botany'' (1881), p. 22), in 2 vols. 1813 and 1814, contains the Greek text, Latin notes, a glossary and Greek-Latin and Latin-Greek catalogues of the plants. From it Stackhouse reprinted in a separate form ''De Libanoto, Smyrna, et Balsamo Theophrasti Notitiæ'', with prefatory ''Extracts'' from
James Bruce
James Bruce of Kinnaird (14 December 1730 – 27 April 1794) was a Scottish traveller and travel writer who confirmed the source of the Blue Nile. He spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethiopia and in 1770 became the first Euro ...
's ''Travels in Abyssinia'', Bath, 1815.
Papers by Stackhouse were published in the ''Transactions of the Linnean Society'' (vols. iii. and v.), dated 1795 and 1798, in the ''Classical Journal'', dated 1815 and 1816 (xi. 154–5, xiii. 445–8, xiv. 289–93), and one, entitled ''Tentamen Marino-cryptogamicum'', and dated Bath, 1807, in the ''Mémoires de la Société des Naturalistes'' of Moscow, as a fellow (1809, ii. 50–97).
Stackhouse also contributed a translation in English verse to the second edition of the Abbate
Alberto Fortis's ''Dei Cataclismi sofferti dal nostro pianeta, saggio poetico'' (London, 1786), and he made contributions to
William Coxe's ''Literary Life and Select Works of Benjamin Stillingfleet''.
Legacy
Letters and his notebooks related to the ''Nereis Britannica'' are in the Linnean Society archive.
Notes
References
Biography
;Attribution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stackhouse, John
1742 births
1819 deaths
People from Probus, Cornwall
Botanists with author abbreviations
Phycologists
18th-century British botanists
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
Taxa named by John Stackhouse
19th-century British botanists