Brigadier William Harry Evans CSI CIE DSO (born 22 July 1876 in

Shillong Shillong () is a hill station and the capital of Meghalaya, a Indian state, state in northeastern India, which means "The Abode of Clouds". It is the headquarters of the East Khasi Hills district. Shillong is the list of most populous cities in ...

– died 13 November 1956,

Church Whitfield Church Whitfield is a village in the civil parish of Whitfield, and just north of Dover, in Kent, England. Village population is included in Whitfield civil parish. Part of the village is called ''Pineham''. St Peter's Church is a 10th-century ...

) was a

lepidopterist Lepidopterology ()) is a branch of entomology concerning the scientific study of moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies. Someone who studies in this field is a lepidopterist or, archaically, an aurelian. Origins Post-Renaissance, t ...

and

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

officer who served in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. He documented the

butterfly 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 ...

fauna of

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

and

Ceylon Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

in a series of articles in the ''Journal of the

Bombay Natural History Society The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants and publi ...

''. Brigadier Evans was especially interested in the

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

and systematics of the butterfly families

Lycaenidae Lycaenidae is the second-largest family of butterflies (behind Nymphalidae, brush-footed butterflies), with over 6,000 species worldwide, whose members are also called gossamer-winged butterflies. They constitute about 30% of the known butterfl ...

and

Hesperiidae Skippers are a family of the Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) named the Hesperiidae. Being diurnal, they are generally called butterflies. They were previously placed in a separate superfamily, Hesperioidea; however, the most recent taxonomy ...

an example being his ''A revision of the

Arhopala ''Arhopala'' is a very large genus of gossamer-winged butterflies (Lycaenidae). They are the type genus of the tribe Arhopalini. In the relatively wide circumscription used here, it contains over 200 species collectively known as oakblues. They o ...

group of Oriental Lycaenidae (Lepidoptera: Rhopalocera)'' ''Bull. British Mus. (Nat. Hist.)'', Ent., vol. 5: pp. 85–141 (1957).

Life and work

Evans was the third son of Sir Horace Moule Evans and Elizabeth Anne, daughter of Surgeon General J. T. Tressider. His mother kindled an interest in nature and, when he was sent to

King's School, Canterbury The King's School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for 13 to 18 year old pupils) in Canterbury, Kent, England. It is a member of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference and the Eton Group. It is Britain's ...

, he was already interested in

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 ...

and

moth 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 ...

s. He joined the army at the age of 18 and was posted with the Royal Engineers. In 1898 he began collecting butterflies in

Chitral Chitral ( khw, , lit=field, translit=ćhitrār; ur, , translit=ćitrāl) is situated on the Chitral River in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It serves as the capital of the Chitral District and before that as the capital of Chitral ...

. He was sent on duty with the Somaliland Expedition (1902–04), and he injured his knee. He served in France from 1914 to 1918 and was awarded the D.S.O. and a brevet. Exposure to poison gas, however, caused him permanent chest problems. He returned to India in 1919 with his final post in the Western Command at Quetta as a Chief Engineer. He retired in 1931 and travelled to London via Australia. His home was close to the Natural History Museum and he continued to work on Military service and was attached with the Non-Intervention Committee during the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

and later took up work as an

Air Raid Warden Air Raid Precautions (ARP) refers to a number of organisations and guidelines in the United Kingdom dedicated to the protection of civilians from the danger of air raids. Government consideration for air raid precautions increased in the 1920s an ...

. He was at a window in the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

, facing South onto Cromwell Road when a German

V1 flying bomb The V-1 flying bomb (german: Vergeltungswaffe 1 "Vengeance Weapon 1") was an early cruise missile. Its official Reich Aviation Ministry () designation was Fi 103. It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug and in Germany a ...

burst on the road away. He was injured and his hearing was permanently impaired. His wife lived in Bournemouth during the air raids (and died there in 1945). Evans, however, stayed in London to complete his ''Revision of the Hesperiidae of the world'', as he stated "before he died". Evans collected butterflies throughout his career in India and was very knowledgeable on distribution patterns. His favourite collection areas included

Kodaikanal Kodaikanal () is a hill station which is located in Dindigul district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Its name in the Tamil language means "The Gift of the Forest". Kodaikanal is referred to as the "Princess of Hill stations" and has a long ...

Jabalpur Jabalpur is a city situated on the banks of Narmada River in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. According to the 2011 census, it is the third-largest urban agglomeration in Madhya Pradesh and the country's 38th-largest urban agglomeration. J ...

Simla Shimla (; ; also known as Simla, the official name until 1972) is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared as the summer capital of British India. After independence, the ...

Murree Murree ( Punjabi, Urdu: مری) is a mountain resort city, located in the Galyat region of the Pir Panjal Range, within the Muree District of Punjab, Pakistan. It forms the outskirts of the Islamabad-Rawalpindi metropolitan area, and is about ...

Darjeeling Darjeeling (, , ) is a town and municipality in the northernmost region of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located in the Eastern Himalayas, it has an average elevation of . To the west of Darjeeling lies the easternmost province of Nepal, ...

and

Baluchistan Balochistan ( ; bal, بلۏچستان; also romanised as Baluchistan and Baluchestan) is a historical region in Western and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. ...

. He travelled to Australia to collect the endemic subfamily

Trapezitinae Trapezitinae is a subfamily of the Hesperiidae ("skippers") family of butterflies. They are found only in New Guinea and Australia. The subfamily contains about 60 species in 16 genera. Genera * '' Anisynta'' Lower, 1911 * '' Antipodia'' Atk ...

. He did not set and preserve specimens in cabinets and preferred paper covers. From 1923 he published keys to the identification of Indian butterflies in the ''

Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society The ''Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society'' (also ''JBNHS'') is a natural history journal published several times a year by the Bombay Natural History Society. First published in January 1886, and published with only a few interruptio ...

''. Evans examined over half a million specimens of

in the museum. Evans was influenced by the works of

Bernhard Rensch Bernhard Rensch (21 January 1900 – 4 April 1990) was a German evolutionary biologist and ornithologist who did field work in Indonesia and India. Starting his scientific career with pro-Lamarckian views, he shifted to selectionism and became on ...

Ernst Mayr Ernst Walter Mayr (; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned Taxonomy (biology), taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, Philosophy of biology, philosopher o ...

and

Thomas Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The storie ...

, but he was not comfortable with the ideas of

phylogenetic classification Phylogenetic nomenclature is a method of nomenclature for taxa in biology that uses phylogenetic definitions for taxon names as explained below. This contrasts with the traditional approach, in which taxon names are defined by a '' type'', which ...

. His only son, Dr. J. W. Evans, continued in Entomology as a Director of the Australian Museum, Sydney. His collection is in the

, London.

Publications

* 1937. ''A Catalogue of the African Hesperiidae''. British Museum (Natural History), London. * 1949. ''A Catalogue of the Hesperiidae From Europe, Asia, and Australia in the British Museum (Natural History)''. * 1951. ''A Catalogue of the American Hesperiidae Indicating the Classification and Nomenclature Adopted in the British Museum (Natural History)''. Part I. Pyrrhophyginae. British Museum, London. * 1952. ''A Catalogue of the American Hesperiidae Indicating the Classification and Nomenclature Adopted in the British Museum (Natural History)''. Part II. Pyrginae. Section I. British Museum, London. * 1953. ''A Catalogue of the American Hesperiidae Indicating the Classification and Nomenclature Adopted in the British Museum (Natural History)''. Part III. Pyrginae. Section II. British Museum, London. * 1955. ''A Catalogue of the American Hesperiidae Indicating the Classification and Nomenclature Adopted in the British Museum (Natural History)''. Part IV. Hesperiinae and Megathyminae. British Museum, London. * 1932. ''The Identification of Indian Butterflies''.

References

* H. D. P. 1957: vans, W. H.''Entomologist'' 90, 24. * Remington, C. L. 1956: vans, W. H.''Lepidopt. News'' 10, 101. * Riley, N. D. & Remington, C. L. 1956: vans, W. H.''Lepidopt. News'' 10, 193–199, Portrait
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* Sachtleben, H. 1957: vans, W. H.''Beitr. Ent.'' 7, 200–201. {{DEFAULTSORT:Evans, William Henery British entomologists 1876 births 1956 deaths Royal Engineers officers British Army personnel of World War I Companions of the Order of the Star of India Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire Companions of the Distinguished Service Order People educated at The King's School, Canterbury British lepidopterists 20th-century British zoologists Civil Defence Service personnel