Alexander Henry Haliday

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).

Alexander Henry Haliday, also known as Enrico Alessandro Haliday and Alexis Heinrich Haliday (1807–1870), was an Irish entomologist. He is primarily known for his work on Hymenoptera, Diptera and Thysanoptera, but Haliday worked on all insect orders and on many aspects of entomology.

Haliday was born in Holywood, County Down, Northern Ireland. A boyhood friend of Robert Templeton he divided his time between Ireland and Lucca, now part of Italy, where he was a co-founder with Camillo Rondani and Targioni-Tozetti of the Italian Entomological Society. He was a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and the Belfast Natural History Society and a Fellow of the (now Royal) Entomological Society of London.

With Hermann Loew (1807–1879), Alexander Haliday was the greatest Dipterist of the 19th century and one of the most renowned British entomologists of the day. His achievements were in four main fields: description, higher taxonomy, synonymy and biology. He erected many major taxa including the order Thysanoptera and the families Mymaridae and Ichneumonidae. Most of Haliday's correspondence with British and continental entomologists is in the library of the Royal Entomological Society, other parts are in the Hope Department Library at the University of Oxford.

Haliday died in Lucca in 1870. “He was our first entomologist. His ideas of classification and tabulation were so logical, his latinity so classical, and his knowledge of whatever he touched so masterly that I fear we shall be long before we look upon his like again” Westwood, Obituary (Trans. Ent. Soc. London 1870: XLVII).

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Family

Alexander Henry Haliday was born at Clifden, Holywood , a small seaside town in Co Down, Ireland on 21 November, 1806, the eldest child of William Haliday, a cloth merchant, and Marion Webster. The Haliday family, were Protestant, though not religious, and clearly well-placed, holding 3228 acres of farmland in Co Antrim valued at £3,054.00 in 1820. The family also owned property in Holywood and in Dublin and had a cloth merchant business. They also had were also shipping interests. Haliday’s brother, William Robert, was sometime a Lieutenant-Colonel in the 36th Regiment of Foot quartered at Windsor. Aside from a collection of parrots from Australia, Malacca and Malabar, collected in the 1840s, William Haliday, whose name on the army register is spelled Halliday, is not known as a naturalist.Haliday's sister was named Hortense. She was interested in botany. Little is known of Hortense except that she suffered from tuberculosis as did the rest of the family. She is charmingly enshrined in Curtis’ folio 4596 of British Entomology - being illustrations and descriptions of the genera of insects found in Great Britain and Ireland May 1 1836 “For the beautiful drawing of Rosa hibernica (the Belfast Rose) I am indebted to Miss Haliday”. The Haliday family had relatives in Lucca, Italy -the Pisani’s. – “I have been a long time about writing to you but the return of my sister and some other relatives from Italy who had not been home for many years has filled our house and occupied my thoughts mostly ie my cousin Mme Pisani, her husband and three nieces with myself " he wrote . The Pisani's were a prominent Lucca family and Haliday a frequent visitor to "Campagna bella e chiamate di Tuscanys a Firenze, a Lucca, a Pisa ed al Cinque Terre che la campagna della Toscana allunga dall'aria croccante e libera del Apennines ad alcune delle linee costiere più belle dell'Italia ". The frequent presence of the Pisani family led to, according to Camillo Rondani "Alessandro's" learning Italian "al suo ginocchio delle madri, come un nativo"-Rondani as a child.

[edit] Education

Haliday and his life-long friend (though they were to see nothing of each other after 1833) Robert Templeton began their education at Belfast Academical Institution Opened in 1814,the school had strong leanings towards natural history Haliday, aged twelve, studied Classics first, then two years later took up Arithmetic and then two years after that Mathematics. Both boys were taught drawing by an Italian master whose talents evidently lay in teaching as much as skill. Both boys became skilled illustrators. The natural history lessons ,from George Crawford Hyndman , were not a part of the curriculum but formal.Hyndman was an avid insect collector and one of the founding members of The Belfast Natural History Society which had a Museum and Library. Haliday left Belfast Academical Institution, and the family home in nearby Holywood at fifteen, for Dublin where he entered Trinity College in 1822, graduating in 1827. He was awarded a gold medal in classics.After graduating and aged twenty Haliday went to Paris in late 1827 staying for most of a year.

[edit] Metropolitan Dublin

Haliday in the years 1825-1840 spent most of his time in Dublin from 1833 living at No 3 North Cumberland Street (in later years his Dublin address was No.8 Harcourt Street). He returned frequently to Clifden,however and also spent much time in London and more than occasionally visited Lucca, staying with the Pisani's. Aside from its modern, metropolitan pleasures, Dublin had competing attractions for Haliday: the Dublin Society housing the Leske Collection, the Marsh Library and that of Trinity College, the Linnaean Garden (a garden presenting the 24 classes of Carolus Linnaeus’ Systema the Opera and the Theatre Royal.

[edit] Times of strife

Anfiteatro Lucca
Anfiteatro Lucca

Between the years of 1841 and 1848 Haliday seems to have spent most, if not all of his time away from Ireland, mainly in the Pisani family home in Lucca. In these years Europe was riven by conflict culminating in the Revolutions of 1848. Prior to this the Irish Potato Famine beginning in 1845 took as many as one million lives from hunger and disease by 1849.

[edit] More settled times

In the 1850s Haliday, once more resident in Dublin, where from 1854-1860 he edited parts of the Natural History Review, gave lectures at meetings of the Dublin University Zoological Association (Trinity College) and curated the insect collections at the same University. Here he renewed his interest in geology ( Haliday, as did most educated people, had a well read copy of Charles Lyell's 3 volume book, Principles of Geology, in published between 1830 and 1833). He became a member of the Dublin University Geological Society on its foundation,not only attending meetings but the reading papers of geologists unable to attend in person. Presumably his language skills were also useful. A manuscript in the Royal Irish Academy proves that Haliday gave a series of talks on fossil insects to the Dublin geologists illustrating this with specimens some from his own and the Universities collections. In these years he made regular visits to London, usually staying with Henry Tibbats Stainton. The visits coincided with the more important meetings of the Entomological Society of London. Visits to the continent included two trips to Switzerland staying near Monte Rosa with entomological friends.

[edit] Italy

In 1862 (February) Haliday took up residence in Villa San Cordeo in Lucca,staying in Paris en route to study the important Johann Wilhelm Meigen collection. Changes of address in Lucca became the rule in March, Casa Pelosi,May, Monte Bonelli and in 1863 Villa Buia. Then following a trip to Sicily he moved into Villa Pisani, with his cousin Mme. Pisani and her family (husband and three nieces). Visits to see entomologists and expeditions became much more frequent. He collected insects over much of northern Italy in these years.

[edit] Travels in Italy

From 1862 until his death Haliday travelled widely in Italy, mainly in the North - Emilia-Romagna, Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Lombardy, Piedmont, Trentino-South Tyrol, Aosta Valley and in Tuscany although he made two trips to Sicily.Various trips to Swtzerland, France and Bavaria followed and in 1865, with Edward Percival Wright, he made an entomological expedition to Portugal. In May and June 1868 he toured Sicily also with Wright.

Pietra bismantova cusna
Pietra bismantova cusna

"I am back but a few days from an excursion in the Apennines cut short by unfavourable weather. I took a horse and man from baths of Lucca and found myself at Abetone the pass between Tuscany and Modena — ascending Gione the highest point of the central Apennines which lies a little detached from the chain so commanding a more extensive view including both seas Adriatic and Tyorhem but I saw on the top only fog, rain and rock. Rondinago the next highest (in the main chain) was little better as to view and in the mist my guide who had never been at the summit took me up the most precipitous side really a perilous climb in fog — I had intended going on to some of the Apuan Alps (or Carrara range) but this experience discouraged me — also I found that the season was too far advanced in respect to vegetation and consequently insects".

Emilia-Romagna

Specific collecting localities

Comacchio; Massa

Tuscany

Toscana
Toscana

The second tour of Sicily with Wright in 1870 was his last.He died in Lucca.

[edit] Societies

Haliday was a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, the Entomological Society of London, the Dublin University Zoological Association, the Dublin University Geological Societythe Stettin Entomological Society and La Società Entomologica Italiana or,in English, the Italian Entomological Society, of which he was a cofounder.

[edit] Haliday the man

A cultured man Haliday was quite at home at the opera and was was an avid concert and theatre-goer in both Dublin and Lucca and, occsionally Rome. Occasional literary references point to the novel and, naturally the classics and we know of family visits especially with Madame Pisani (of whom he appears to have been extraordinarily fond) "to view the paintings” He was, presumably, culturally no different to any other highly educated European gentleman.Invitations are to be found among the papers in the Royal Irish Academy- to M. Gounod's "Sappho", first performed in Paris in 1851, Verdi's "Rigoletto" Il Trovatore", "La Traviata and Les Vespres Siciliennes" Schumann's "Manfred"; Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" and Berlioz' " The Infant Christ".Such advanced musical tastes and opportunities usually come early in life and by were presumably instilled in Hortense and Henry by the Pisani's rather than by Haliday's provincial and decidedly dour family.It is worth noting, but no more, that Giacomo Puccini, the Italian opera composer,was born in Lucca, Halidays other hometownin 1859.Business,or rather lack of it did not occupy Haliday.There is no reference in his will to other than minor amounts. He died without leaving property or significant sums of money money.As to personality,there is much humour in Haliday’s writing all of it good natured and he was very tolerant of others failings though not always.Modesty was not a virtue:Haliday was by no mean self-effacing. Far from it - "A seafog, beyond the headland of Pxxxxxio, obscured the Mediterranean with the islands Elba, Corsica etc. But on that sidethe wild serrated coast of the Apeninne? Alps was distinctly drawn and before us, from the one extremity where it first rises out of the Lunigiana valley, to the other where it ends in the half detached group of the Pisan mountains “whereby the Pisans cannot see Lucca” ". The quote, which, in full is, in English, "Hunting the wolf and whelps upon the mountain for which the Pisans cannot see Lucca" is from Dante's Inferno Canto 23.No matter what the context Haliday simply could not resist showing his literary and other prowess whenever the opputunity presented itself. Religion did not interest him,though a regular attender at the Protestant church in Lucca and an opponent of Transcendentalism Haliday was not a religious man.His political views were less progressive, at least in respect of the American Civil War and the Risorgimento.Despite,the disordered nature of much of Haliday’s life and suggestions that he suffered from nervous dyspepsia but this is belied by much of his writing and by and large he was in robust health.

[edit] Major Achievements

“In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister” Goethe Natur und Kunst.

  • Contributions to the species concept.See discussion [1]
  • Contributions to the concept of synonymy. See discussion [2]
  • Establishing rules for systematics and nomenclature, Haliday's refined analysis of the history of names and the natural groupings the names identified was a model of perfection and the rules Haliday suggested were taken up by all important continental and most British authors.
  • Haliday's description of the genus Orphnephila (Diptera: Thaumalaeidae)and the accompanying plate set a new standard of descriptive taxonomy far in advance of anything of it's time [3].
  • Haliday ‘s Essay on the classification of parasitic Hymenoptera is a seminal work of higher taxonomy.He was one of the pioneers of the group.Others were Johann Ludwig Christian Gravenhorst, Arnold Foerster (also Förster) and Nees von Essenbeck. The higher classification of the ichneumons is unstable but many of Haliday’s higher taxa have survived.
  • Haliday was a specialist, working full-time on Diptera in the families Sphaeroceridae and Dolichopodidae and on the Hymenoptera and Thysanoptera (excepting the arena of synonymy)

[edit] Works

See [4]

Missing from this list: Dohrn, C.A. and Haliday, A.H., 1851 Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen Sendschreiben von Alexis H. Haliday an C. A. Dohrn über die Dipteren der in London befindlichen Linnéischen Sammlung Aus dem Englischen uberstez von Anna Dohrn but also (index) Haliday, A.H. Über die Dipteren der in London befindlichen Linnéischen Sammlung Stettiner Entomologische Zeitung 12: 131-145.

[edit] Most important works

  • 1832 The characters of two new dipterous genera with indications of some generic subdivisions and several species of Dolichopodidae. Zoological Journal 5: 350-368. 1 pl.
  • 1833 with Francis Walker. Monographia Chalciditum. London, 1833-1842, Much of this work was collaborative with Haliday A.H who was the sole author of the sectional diagnoses.
  • 1833-1838 An essay on the classification of the parasitic Hymenoptera...of Britain which correspond with the Ichneumones minuti of Linnaeus. Entomological Magazine 1: 259-276; 333-350; 48-491; 2: 93-106; 225-259; 4: 92-106; 203-221; 5:209-248.
  • 1836 British species of the dipterous tribe Sphaeroceridae. Entomological Magazine 3: 315-336.
  • 1836 An epitome of the British genera in the order Thysanoptera with indications of a few of the species. Entomological Magazine 3: 439-451.
  • 1837 with John Curtis, James Charles Dale, Francis Walker, Second edition of A guide to the arrangement of British insects being a catalogue of all the named species hitherto discovered in Great Britain and Ireland *1839 Hymenoptera Britannica : Oxyura et Alysia. London, Balliére Fasc. 1: 15, Fasc. 2: 28 et 4.
  • 1839 Hymenopterorum Synopsis and Methodum Fallenii ut plurimum accomodata (Belfast) 8 4pg. s.titulo.

1851-6 in Francis Walker Insecta Britannica Diptera 3 vols. London Characters and synoptical tables of the order (vol.I: 1-9 of the Empidae (Vol.I:85-88) of the Syrphidae (Vol.I: 234-237) chapters on the Dolichopodidae (Vol.I: 144-221),on the Borborides (Vol.II: 171-184), on the Hydromyzides (Vol.II: 247-269)also the corrigenda and addenda (Vol.III: xi-xvi) and contributions to the J.O. Westwood plates.

  • 1857 Review Zoonomische briefe : allgemeine darstellung der Thierischen Organisation Von Dr. Hermann Burmeister, Professor der Zoologie zu Halle. Ersler und Zweiter Theil 8 vo. Otto Wigand: Leipzig 1856. Natural History Review (Proc.) 4: 69-77.

[edit] Miscellania

[edit] Haliday and the Linnean Collection

In the winter of 1847-8 Carl August Dohrn joined Haliday in London for a study of the Linnean collection later to be published in the Stettin Ent. Zeit for 1851 (Volume 12 131-145)under the German title Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen Sendschreiben von Alexis H. Haliday an C. A. Dohrn über die Dipteren der in London befindlichen Linnéischen Sammlung Aus dem Englischen uberstez von Anna Dohrn but also. Über die Dipteren der in London befindlichen Linnéischen Sammlung. Dohrn, with his daughter Anna was staying with Henry Tibbats Stainton in Lewisham at the time. It was she, on a later visit to London who translated the account. Though Dohrn appears as author, he simply communicated the paper.In many bibliographies the paper is attributed to Haliday alone. This is the only known early account of the Diptera collection of Carl von Linné, examined 64 years after it's acquisition by the Linnean Society.See[5]

[edit] Haliday and Darwin

"No branch of natural science has more fully felt the beneficial impulse and stimulus of Darwin's labors than entomology" Charles Valentine Riley 1883

In 1837 the results of Haliday's work on the Hymenoptera collected by the naturalists on two ships, H.M.S. 'Adventure' and H.M.S. 'Beagle' which had over three years explored the coasts of South America were published by Haliday as Descriptions etc., of the insects collected by Captain P.P. King, R.N., F.R.S. in the survey of the straits of Magellan. Descriptions etc. of the hymenoptera in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London 7: 316-331. This came about through John Curtis. "I know not if I ever told you that I had undertaken to describe the insects collected in Captain King's survey of the Straits of Magellan, but they occupy some of my leisure moments and I have now got them into order and have labelled the whole so that I know from what place each specimen cameo Mr. Walker has kindly undertaken to describe the Diptera and I wish to ask you if you would like to undertake the Hymenoptera, there are not so many species, Ichneumonidae, ants, wasps and bees. I am entitled to the 2nd specimens which I shall have great pleasure in awarding to you if the undertaking would afford you any satisfaction. I would figure one of two of the most curious or conspicuous and any time before Midsummer would do" Curtis to Haliday As a consequence when the Beagle docked at Falmouth on a stormy night in 1836 the Diptera and Hymenoptera were progressively dispatched ( between 1837 and 1839), to Haliday in Dublin by Francis Walker who was to describe most of the "Chalcidites" and some of the Diptera.Although Haliday himself published nothing on these his notes and comments were published by Walker. The Darwin insects retained by Haliday are in the National Museum of Ireland,they, and the circumstances are detailed by Smith [6] in a now online publication.

[edit] Contacts

Haliday was a very influential figure in entomology as his contacts show. They were:-

Robert Mac Lachlan (1837-1904) Forest Hill, Lewisham London England

Ignaz Rudolph Schiner (1813-1873) Austria Diptera (species recognition)

Hermann Loew (1807-1879) Germany Diptera species recognition, description, higher taxonomy

Francis Walker (1809-1874) England All orders species recognition, description,

Achille Costa Museum director, Naples

John Curtis (1791-1862) England All orders species recognition, description

Carl August Dohrn (1806-1892) Germany

James Charles Dale (1792-1872) England

John Obadiah Westwood (1804-1893) England All orders species recognition, description, higher taxonomy

Camillo Rondani (1807-1879) Italy Diptera

Henry Tibbats Stainton (1822-1892) Mountsfield, Lewisham, England. Microlepidoptera species recognition, description, higher taxonomy

Frédéric Jules Sichel Paris Hymenoptera

Giorgio JanMilan

Philipp Christoph Zeller (1808-1883) Germany teacher microlepidoptera long series of generic and higher group revisions.-greatest lepidopterist of the century

John William Douglas (1814-1905) England Microlepidoptera species recognition, description, higher taxonomy

Rasmus Carl Staeger (1800-1875) Denmark Diptera

Thomas Vernon Wollaston (1822-1878) England Diptera

Heinrich Frey (1822-1890) Switzerland

Adolfo Targioni Tozzetti (1823-1902) Italy

Thomas Ansell Marshall (1827-1903) The College Milford Haven later Barnstaple Devon England Hymenoptera.

Arnold Foerster (1810-1884) Aachen Germany Ichneumonidae

Pietro Stefanelli (1834-1919) Italy.

Fernandino Piccioli (1821-1900) Italy

Edmond de Sélys Longchamps (1813-1900) Belgium Odonata

John Curtis (1791-1862) England All orders.

Maximilian Spinola (1780-1857) Italy All orders but especially Diptera, Coleoptera.

Johann Angelo Ferrari (1806-1876) Italy

Friedrich Kipp (1814-1869)London,England

Andrew Murray (1812-1878) Scotland

Edward Newman (1801-1876) Peckham, London, England Lepidoptera

G.T. Rudd ?of 4 Kelpel? Street Russel Square London.

William Wilson Saunders (1809-1879)Margate, England.

Frederick Smith (1805-1879 (British Museum?) England.

Odorado Pirazzoli Imola, Italy Coleoptera

Johann Heinrich Kaltenbach (1807-1876) Germany

Carl Herman Conrad Burmeister (1807-1892) Germany Essig

August Emil Holmgren (1829-1888) Ostergotland Ichneumonidae

George Robert Crotch (1842-1874) England Coleoptera

Carl Gustav Alexander Brischke (1814-1897) Danzig Ichneumonidae

Ernst Gustav Kraatz Coleoptera

Jacques-Marie-Frangile Bigot,(In French)

Émile Blanchard

Emil von Brück Lucca and Crefeld)

Jean Baptiste Lucien Buquet (In French)

Achille Deyrolle Paris (In French)

Jean Antoine Dours Amiens (In French)

Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko Salerno, Moscow,Orenburg, Samerkand botanist(In French)

Arnold Foerster (In German)

G. Ritton von Frauenfeld Viennathen, then Berlin (In German)

Francois Jean-Paul GervaisMonpellier (In French)

F. Giraud Paris (In French)

Hermann August Hagen Konigsberg, 10 December 1862 (In English)

Jaennicke Frankfurt(In English)

Charles Javet Paris(In French)

Ernest August Hellmuth von Kiesenwetter Bautreu(In German)

Leopold Anton Kirchner Kaplitz(In German)

Hippolyte Lucas Jardin des Plantes, Paris(In French)

Gustav Mayr (In German)

Étienne Mulsant Lyons (In French)

Henri Milne-Edwards Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris(In French)

Karl Robert Osten-SackenNew York, 9 January 1869 (In English)

Michel Rajewscy Vienna(In French)

Hermann Reinhard Bautzen and Dresden 1860–1869 (In German)

Dr. Renard, Moscow (In French)

Otho Ruthe Berlin (In German)

Henri de Saussure Geneva (In German)

Michel Edmond de Selys-Longchamps Liege(In French)

Sylvain Auguste de Marseul

Giovanni Passerini

[edit] Taxa erected by Haliday

Families of Hymenoptera

and with Francis Walker

[edit] External links

[edit] Sources

Institutions (manuscripts, letters)

Publications

  • Anon.,1902. Irish Naturalist 11:197-199.
  • Osten Sacken. C.R., 1903. Record of my life work in entomology. vii + 240pp. (pp.51-62 portrait). Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • Howard, L.O., 1930. Smithsonian miscellaneous Collections 84: 217, 231, portrait.
  • Neave. A., 1933. A Centenial history of the entomological Society of London. (p.134). London.
  • National Museum[Of Ireland] Bulletin 3: 27-28, portrait.Dublin.

Obituaries

  • 1870 Anon. Entomologists' monthly Magazine 7:91.
  • 1870 Anon. Abeille 7: lxxv-lxxvi.
  • 1870 Anon. American Journal of Science 50:294.
  • 1870 Anon. Nature, London 2: 240.
  • 1870 Kraatz. G. Berliner Entomologisches Zeitschrift 14:x.
  • 1871 Anon. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London 1870-71: lxxxvii-lxxxviii.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../a/l/e/Alexander_Henry_Haliday_3f92.html"
In other languages