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William Forsell Kirby (14 January 1844 – 20 November 1912) was an
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William Forsell Kirby (14 January 1844 – 20 November 1912) was an English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
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 ara ...
and folklorist
Folklore studies, less often known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in the United Kingdom, is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currenc ...
.
Life
He was born inLeicester
Leicester ( ) is a city status in the United Kingdom, city, Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority and the county town of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. It is the largest settlement in the East Midlands.
The city l ...
. He was the eldest son of Samuel Kirby, who was a banker. He was educated privately, and became interested in butterflies
Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which also includes moths. Adult butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprises ...
and moths
Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...
at an early age. The family moved to Brighton, where he became acquainted with Henry Cooke, Frederick Merrifield and J. N. Winter. He published the ''Manual of European Butterflies'' in 1862.
In 1867 he became a curator in the Museum of the Royal Dublin Society, and produced a ''Synonymic Catalogue of Diurnal Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera ( ) is an order of insects that includes butterflies and moths (both are called lepidopterans). About 180,000 species of the Lepidoptera are described, in 126 families and 46 superfamilies, 10 percent of the total described speci ...
'' (1871; Supplement 1877).
In 1879 Kirby joined the staff of the British Museum (Natural History)
The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum ...
as an assistant, after the death of Frederick Smith. He published a number of catalogues, as well as ''Rhopalocera Exotica'' (1887–1897) and an ''Elementary Text-book of Entomology''. He also did important work on orthopteroid
Orthopteroids are insects which historically would have been included in the order Orthoptera and now may be placed in the Polyneoptera. When Carl Linnaeus started applying binomial names to animals in the 10th edition of his '' Systema Natura ...
insects including a three volume Catalogue of all known species (1904, 1906, 1910). He retired in 1909.
Kirby had a wide range of interests, knew many languages and fully translated Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bot ...
's national epic
A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation—not necessarily a nation state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with a ...
, the Kalevala
The ''Kalevala'' ( fi, Kalevala, ) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and ...
, from Finnish into English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ...
. Kirby's translation, which carefully reproduces the Kalevala meter
Trochaic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line of four trochaic feet. The etymology of the word Trochaic is the Greek word ''trokhaios'', from the verb ''trecho'', which means "I run". In classical metre, a trochee is a foot con ...
, was a major influence on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, who first read it in his teens. Kirby also provided many footnotes to Sir Richard Burton's translation of the ''Arabian Nights''.
A short biography of Kirby, with particular reference to his work on phasmids, was published by P. E. Bragg in 2007.
Evolution
Kirby was an advocate oftheistic evolution
Theistic evolution (also known as theistic evolutionism or God-guided evolution) is a theological view that God creates through laws of nature. Its religious teachings are fully compatible with the findings of modern science, including biologica ...
. In his book ''Evolution and Natural Theology'', he argued that evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
and theism are compatible. He noted that creationism
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 't ...
was scientifically untenable and refuted its arguments. He viewed nature as a "vast self-adjusting machine".
Publications
Entomology
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Other biology
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Further reading
*''The Natural History Museum at South Kensington'' by William T. StearnExternal links
* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kirby, William Forsell 1844 births 1912 deaths 19th-century translators Critics of creationism Employees of the Natural History Museum, London English lepidopterists Irish entomologists People from Leicester Theistic evolutionists Translators from Finnish