by Kishore Chandra Sahoo
Edward Meyrick, F.R.S. (1854-1938)
Born on November 25, 1854 at Ramsbury, Wiltshire, Edward Meyrick received his early education at Marlborough College, where he got enrolled in 1868. Later, with a modest scholarship, he got enrolled at Trinity College after leaving Marlborough for Cambridge in 1873. He was awarded with the Abbott (University) Scholarship for Classics in the following year, and was named the Scholar of Trinity in 1876. His illustrious academic career at Cambridge resulted in a first-class degree in the Classical Tripos in 1877.
He was quite interested in the College's Natural History Society while he was a kid at Marlborough. He was focussing on the study of Microlepidoptera at this early point in his career, which he would eventually become the expert on. Before leaving the College, he published his first scientific work, List of Local Lepidoptera (1873), which included over 800 species and was the first comprehensive list of Marlborough Lepidoptera ever created. This is mostly attributed to his own hard work. He would frequently get up early at 4 a.m. when the other boys were still asleep, go to the forest, and return for his classes at 7 a.m. In his Preface to the College Natural History Society report of 1872, Mr. Preston, the founder of the Marlborough Natural History Society, praised Meyrick's collecting endeavours by saying: "Meyrick has not left a lamp, or a paling, or a tree unexamined in which a moth could possibly, in any stage of its existence, lie hid."
From October 1877 until December 1886, Meyrick moved to Australia and New Zealand for more than nine years. He taught at the Cathedral Choir School in Christchurch, New Zealand, from about April 1882 to February 1883. Prior to that, he was a master at the Sydney Grammar School until 1881. He left the Christchurch school early in February and stayed in New Zealand to investigate the Microlepidoptera. As an outcome, he came up with a monograph titled "New Zealand Geometrina" which was published in the Trans. N.Z. Inst. XVI in May 1884, along with a number of short papers. He returned to Australia and was a master at the King’s School, Parramatta, New South Wales, finally sailing for home in December 1886.
Then, in 1887, he returned back to Marlborough College as a master of Classics, and continued there until his retirement in 1914. He served as president of the Marlborough College Natural History Society for the last fifteen years of his tenure, which inspired numerous young naturalists, many of whom later became men of distinction. He had already produced over fifty-five papers by 1900. He eventually authored over 400 publications and began paying close attention to the microlepidoptera of rest of the world, especially the tropics. Meyrick was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1904 and was also a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and the Zoological Society of London, extraordinary feat for a schoolmaster. He was also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (elected in 1907), of the Royal Society of South Australia, and a corresponding member of the Entomological Society of Argentina. During the years as a master at Marlborough College, he published many of his entomological works, including A handbook of British Lepidoptera (1895, revised ed. 1928); "Microlepidoptera", in Fauna Hawaiiensis (1899, 153 pp); Descriptions of Australian microlepidoptera (Sydney, 1904, 185 pp); and Lepidoptera heterocera (Bruxelles, 1910-1925). Meyrick deviated from the previous classification system, which was based on fugitive traits like wing patterns and colours, in these books. Instead, he relied mostly, though not exclusively, on the more permanent features like shapes of the veins or neurations of the wings.
It was not only the Microlepidoptera of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands on which Meyrick became the authority. In a lengthy series of studies published in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society between 1905 and 1914, Meyrick detailed the Microlepidoptera of India in a series of papers titled: Descriptions of Indian Micro-lepidoptera.

He also studied the South African Microlepidoptera in 1908, and in 1927, he received the Captain Scott Memorial Medal in appreciation of his efforts. Although Meyrick published in a variety of journals from 1875 to 1938, he eventually began his own periodical named, Exotic Microlepidoptera, to publish many of his new descriptions to avoid the difficulties concerned with so many descriptions, scattered in numerous papers published in various parts of the world and the delays in publication. Most of his descriptions were published in Exotic Microlepidoptera (of which four volumes are extensive and the fifth one is represented by a few number of descriptions) from 1912 to 1937 where he described 821 new genera and 6,876 new species spanning 2,722 pages in total. He humorously stated in the preface of Exotic Microlepidoptera that this publication is “a spasmodic entomological magazine on one subject by a single contributor’.
Meyrick frequently published significant revisional articles in which he tried to classify groups according to evolutionary lines in addition to numerous descriptions of species and taxa. He collected a lot of evidence on the relationships between the Lepidoptera of the southern continents and was very interested in evolution and how it affects the geographic distribution of taxa. He was a keen observer who gathered an extensive amount of knowledge about his subject and had an amazing capacity to identify and recall species. He once said: “Show me the Microlepidoptera of a Pacific Island and I will tell you that island’s geological history”. His work was of the highest calibre, and he consistently described species in the same way throughout his career. He usually returned the type specimens after describing them so that these remained available for study by other entomologists. He also focused on the food plants and species' life habits, giving economic entomologists crucial information. He is rightfully regarded as the father of microlepidoptera systematics, especially the nomenclature and classification of the smaller moths.
His study of the insects of Australia and New Zealand led to disproval of the Wegener's theory that Australia and New Zealand, which had once been one, had drifted a thousand miles apart. As a naturalist, Meyrick held a broad perspective, which Comstock has dubbed Meyrick's Laws (although the word "laws" might not be quite appropriate here):
"No new organ can be produced except as a modification of some previously existing structure."
"A lost organ cannot be regained."
"A rudimentary organ is rarely re-developed."


In 1914, Meyrick retired from his position as the College's master. However, his retirement did not break off his relationship with school members. Both the existing and previous generations of Marlborough students were aware that he was available to any aspiring entomologist in his study at Thomhanger on Marlborough Common, and they made use of the opportunity. A strong interest in the topic sufficed as an introduction. On a Sunday afternoon, a boy would arrive with a box of specimens and stay for hours. He would then become a frequent visitor, confident that he would be welcomed. Meyrick was able to establish enduring friendships with both existing and former Marlburians in this way because of his unique charm, which made the complete novice feel as comfortable as a renowned entomologist from abroad.
He died on 30th March 1938, at the age of 84, after a very brief illness and was buried at Ramsbury with his forefathers in the beautiful churchyard surrounding the old historic parish church.

In addition to hundreds of new genera and several new families, Meyrick had described around 20,000 new species of Lepidoptera during his 60 years of diligent work of which more than 14,000 were Microlepidoptera. He voluntarily donated a significant portion of the known species in his own collection to the British Museum of Natural History which is of incalculable significance. This outstanding gift to the Natural History Museum's Department of Entomology includes over 100,000 Lepidopteran specimens that are meticulously indexed, along with water-color illustrations and an exhaustive catalogue. Both the Imperial Institute of Entomology and the British Museum authorities sent him new Microlepidoptera to study until the later phases of his life, demonstrating that even in his advanced age, his hand-eye accuracy was unmatched.

After his demise, later in the century, the importance of structures and modifications of genitalia for species level identification of microlepidoptera was realised. As most of the Meyrick’s descriptions were brief, based on the wing coloration and pattern, unsupported with any illustration, J. F. Gates Clarke started examining the huge collection of Meyrick’s types at the British Museum (Natural History) deposited in over two hundred double-sided store-boxes measuring 11x16 inches. Clarke (1955-1970) illustrated the Meyrick’s types (along with genitalia illustrations) in a series of eight volumes of: “Catalogue of the type specimens of microlepidoptera in the British Museum (Natural History) described by Edward Meyrick”. Clarke’s catalogue of Meyrick’s types still forms the sound reference for identification of Indian Microlepidoptera.
When Meyrick was awarded the Captain Scott Memorial Medal for his research on South African Microlepidoptera, the president of the South African Biological Society had rightly said: “Mr. Meyrick's is an example of what can be done by a single individual, unsupported, with no financial backing, but devoted to a task that fills his life”.
For more details, please refer:
Clarke J F G. 1955. Catalogue of the type-specimens of Microlepidoptera in the British Museum (Natural History) described by Edward Meyrick. Vol.1, Trustees of the British Museum, London. 354 pp.
Edward Meyrick, F.R.S. Nature. 138 (3499): 874. 1936. https://doi.org/10.1038%2F138874a0
Fletcher T B. 1938. Edward Meyrick, B.A., F.R.S., F.R.E.S., F.Z.S. Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation 50: 49-51.
Hill A W. 1939. Edward Meyrick 1854-1938. Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 2: 531-548.
Robinson G S. 1986. Edward Meyrick: an unpublished essay on phylogeny, Journal of Natural History 20 (2): 359-367, DOI: 10.1080/00222938600770261
S2A3 Biographical Database of Southern African Science, https://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Biograph_final.php?serial=1914 (accessed on 09.11.2024).
Salmon M A, Marren P, Harley B. 2000. The Aurelian Legacy: British Butterflies and Their Collectors. University of California Press. pp. 191–192.
Kishore Chandra Sahoo, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Dirapi Chapori, Gogamukh, Assam. He is one of the Associate Editors of IE.
Email: kcsahoo1996@gmail.com
Disclaimer: The contents, style, language, plagiarism, references, mention of any products if any, etc., are the sole responsibility of the authors.
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