George Robert Crotch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Robert Crotch (1842 - 1874) was a British entomologist.

Born in Cambridge, England 1842 Crotch became interested in insects, especially Coleoptera, while an undergraduate at Cambridge University. He worked at the University Library, Cambridge. He collected insects in Europe and in the Autumn of 1872, he left England on an entomological tour of the world initially arriving at Philadelphia and in the Spring/Summer of 1873 collected insects in California, Oregon, and the Fraser River in British Colimbia. In 1873 he accepted a position as assistant from Louis Agassiz at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology with Hermann August Hagen. He made collections of Coleoptera in California , Vancouver's Island and Oregon but soon afterwards he died of tuberculosis.

Crotch was the author of a number of books, including Checklist of the Coleoptera of America (1873) and A revision of the Coleopterous family Coccinellidae (1874). His Coleoptera collection from the Azores is in the British Museum, London while the European Coleoptera, Erotylidae and Coccinellidae were left to the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology.

He was an authority on the Coccinellidae (Ladybird beetles) and Erotylidae of the world.

[edit] References

Smart, J. and Wager, B. George Robert Crotch, 1842–1874: a bibliography with a biographical note. JSBNH 8 (3): 244–248 (November 1977).

[edit] Quote

"I am greatly indebted to Mr G. R. Crotch for having sent me numerous prepared specimens of various beetles belonging to these three families [Crioceridae, Chrysomelidae, Tenebrionidae] and others, as well as for valuable information of all kinds . . . I am also much indebted to Mr. E. W. Janson for information and specimens . . . In Carabidae I have examined Elaphrus uliginosus and Blethisa multipunctata, sent to me by Mr Crotch.Charles Darwin.