Thomas Velley (15 May 1748 – 8 June 1806) was an English botanist.
Life
Born at
Chipping Ongar
Chipping Ongar () is a market town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Ongar, in the Epping Forest District of the county of Essex, England. It is located east of Epping, southeast of Harlow and northwest of Brentwood. In 2020 th ...
,
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
, on 15 May 1748, he was son of the Rev. Thomas Velley of the town.
[FamilySearch. England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975.] He matriculated from St. John's College, Oxford, on 19 March 1766, and graduated
B.C.L. in 1772. He became lieutenant-colonel of the Oxford militia, and was made
D.C.L. of the university in 1787. He resided for many years at Bath, and devoted himself to botany, and especially to the study of algæ, collecting chiefly along the south coast. He was the friend and correspondent of
Sir James Edward Smith
__NOTOC__
Sir James Edward Smith (2 December 1759 – 17 March 1828) was an English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society.
Early life and education
Smith was born in Norwich in 1759, the son of a wealthy wool merchant. He displayed a ...
,
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 Jam ...
,
John Stackhouse,
Sir Thomas Gery Cullum,
Sir William Watson the younger, and
Richard Relhan, and became a fellow 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 ...
in 1792.
Jumping from a runaway stage-coach at Reading on 6 June 1806, Velley fell and suffered
concussion
A concussion, also known as a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), is a head injury that temporarily affects brain functioning. Symptoms may include loss of consciousness (LOC); memory loss; headaches; difficulty with thinking, concentration, ...
, from which he died on 8 June.
Legacy
Sir James Edward Smith
__NOTOC__
Sir James Edward Smith (2 December 1759 – 17 March 1828) was an English botanist and founder of the Linnean Society.
Early life and education
Smith was born in Norwich in 1759, the son of a wealthy wool merchant. He displayed a ...
in 1798 gave the name ''
Velleia
''Velleia'' is a genus of herbs in the family Goodeniaceae. Of the 22 species, 21 are endemic to Australia, and one is endemic to New Guinea. The genus was named by James Edward Smith, after Thomas Velley.
Species
Species include:
*'' Velleia a ...
'', in his honour, to an Australasian genus of flowering plants.
Velley's annotated herbarium, illustrated by dissections and microscopic drawings of grasses and other flowering plants, and especially of
algæ, in eight folio volumes, was purchased from his widow by
William Roscoe
William Roscoe (8 March 175330 June 1831) was an English banker, lawyer, and briefly a Member of Parliament. He is best known as one of England's first abolitionists, and as the author of the poem for children '' The Butterfly's Ball, and the ...
for the
Liverpool Botanical Garden
Wavertree Botanic Garden and Park is a mid-19th century public park in Liverpool, England. Originally constructed as a private botanic garden, it was taken over by Liverpool Corporation in 1846 and expanded into a public park.
The park is Grade ...
.
The herbarium is now held at
Liverpool World Museum
World Museum is a large museum in Liverpool, England which has extensive collections covering archaeology, ethnology and the natural and physical sciences. Special attractions include the Natural History Centre and a planetarium. Entry to the ...
.
Works
Velley's only independent work was ''Coloured Figures of Marine Plants found on the Southern Coast of England, illustrated with Descriptions'', Bath, 1795, pp. 38, with five coloured plates. He was credited with four papers in the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
's ''Catalogue'' (vi. 131), but the last was the work of Smith.
References
Attribution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Velley, Thomas
1748 births
1806 deaths
18th-century British botanists
People from Chipping Ongar
Alumni of St John's College, Oxford
Accidental deaths from falls
Accidental deaths in England
Fellows of the Linnean Society of London
19th-century British botanists