Henry John Elwes

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Henry John Elwes FRS (May 16, 1846 - November 26, 1922) was a British botanist and entomologist.

Elwes was the first person to receive the Victoria Medal of the Royal Horticultural Society in 1897. He was the author of a Monograph of the Genus Lilium (1880) and Trees of Great Britain and Ireland with Augustine Henry, as well as numerous articles. He left a collection of 30,000 butterfly specimens to the Natural History Museum.

Elwes travelled widely, visiting India several times. His Memoirs (Elwes, 1930) includes a chapter describing a visit to Nepal in 1914, a time when Europeans were seldom admitted. He mentions an unnamed companion. It is now known that his companion was the English naturalist Aubyn Trevor-Battye, who took some of the photographs used to illustrate this chapter.

[edit] References

Elwes, H.J. Memoirs of Travel, Sport, and Natural History, Edited postumously by E.G. Hawke. Benn, London, 1930.
Trevor-Battye, Aubyn. An unpublished manuscript Indian Journal 1914, in the possession of Trevor-Battye's descendants.