Edgar Leopold Layard

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Edgar Leopold Layard (1824–1900) was a British naturalist mainly interested in ornithology , born in Italy. He was the sixth son of Henry Peter John Layard of the Ceylon Civil Service with his wife Marianne, the daughter of Nathaniel Austin of Ramsgate, Kent and hence he was the brother of the archaeologist and politician Sir Austen Henry Layard.

Layard spent ten years in Ceylon where he studied the local fauna with Robert Templeton (1802-1892). In 1854 he went to the Cape Colony as a civil servant working in the service of the governor George Edward Grey (1812-1898). In 1855, during his spare time, Layard was a curator in the South African Natural History Museum. After this he had posts in Brazil where he collected birds for Arthur Hay (1824-1878).

Edgar Layard, who was Honorary British Consul at Noumea , New Caledonia and his son, Leopold , were active collectors in this region, mainly of bird specimens. Between 1870 and 1881 they visited Fiji , Vanuatu , Samoa , Tonga , the Solomon Islands , New Britain and Norfolk Island. Aside from the South African material the bird collections they made from their 'home base' of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands are the most scientifically important. The Layards sent material to William Sharp MacLeay in Sydney but also to many other ornithologists. Their specimens have become very scattered. Many went to the British Museum in London. Others went to Henry Baker Tristram , and are now in the National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside in Liverpool, England.

In 1887 Layard published The Birds of South Africa where he described 702 species. This work was later updated by Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847-1909).

Layard's 1st wife, Barbara Anne Calthrop, whom he married in 1845, is commemorated in the specific epithet of Layard's Parakeet (Psittacula calthropae) and he named the Brown-breasted Flycatcher (Muscicapa muttui) after his Tamil cook Muttu.

He died on 1 January 1900.

[edit] Sources

• Bo Beolens and Michael Watkins (2003). Whose Bird? Common Bird Names and the People They Commemorate. Yale University Press (New Haven and London).
• Maurice Boubier (1925) Evolution of ornithology. Bookshop Felix Alcan (Paris), New scientific collection: II + 308 p.
• Barbara Mearns & Richard Mearns (1998). The Bird Collectors. Academic Press (London): xvii + 472 p.