William Monod Crawford (1872–1941) was an Irish colonial civil servant in India and an

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

. William Monod Crawford's father was a wealthy

linen Linen () is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant. Linen is very strong, absorbent, and dries faster than cotton. Because of these properties, linen is comfortable to wear in hot weather and is valued for use in garments. It also ...

manufacturer. He was born in Paris on 31 October 1872, living there until he was sixteen when the family returned to Ireland. He served in the Indian Civil Service from 1895 to 1919, in which year he returned to Ireland in 1919 to live in Belfast. After 1919, he undertook various contracts for the

Dunlop Rubber Company Dunlop Ltd. (formerly Dunlop Rubber) was a British multinational company involved in the manufacture of various natural rubber goods. Its business was founded in 1889 by Harvey du Cros and he involved John Boyd Dunlop who had re-invented and ...

mainly in Burma. During his years in India and Burma, Crawford collected

Lepidoptera Lepidoptera ( ) is an order (biology), order of insects that includes butterfly, butterflies and moths (both are called lepidopterans). About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera are described, in 126 Family (biology), families and 46 Taxonomic r ...

. Between 1921 and his death, Crawford was a prolific author of notes on Irish insects. His main interests were

Coleoptera Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 describ ...

and Lepidoptera. Many of his notes concerned migrant moths and butterflies, and he documented the occurrences of several rare hawk moths including the only Northern Ireland record of '' Hippotion celerio'' also known as the silver-striped hawk-moth. He discovered the

small eggar ''Eriogaster lanestris'', commonly known as the small eggar, is a moth of the family Lasiocampidae that is found across the Palearctic. Unlike many other members of the Lasiocampidae, the small eggar is a social insect. Historically, only eusocia ...

Fermanagh Historically, Fermanagh ( ga, Fir Manach), as opposed to the modern County Fermanagh, was a kingdom of Gaelic Ireland, associated geographically with present-day County Fermanagh. ''Fir Manach'' originally referred to a distinct kin group of al ...

in 1928. He also amassed a large collection of Irish Coleoptera. He specialised in the Dytiscidae. His extensive collection of butterflies from the Indian sub-continent is in the Ulster Museum, Belfast. His beetle collection, merged with that of

William Frederick Johnson William Frederick Johnson (1852–1934) was an Irish naturalist primarily interested in Entomology. Biography He was born on 20 April 1852 in Travancore, India, where he spent his youth. A genial and kindly clergyman, he published over 100 pa ...

, is in the same repository. He died on 2 April 1941, aged 69. An obituary appeared in the ''Irish Naturalists' Journal''.G.W. 1936 Obituary: William Monod Crawford, B.A., F.R.E.S., F.Z.S. 1872-1941 ''Irish Naturalists' Journal'', 7:. 336-337

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See also