James Petiver (c.1665–1718) was a London apothecary, a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as London's informal Temple Coffee House Botany Club, famous for his study of botany and entomology.
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Born in Hillmorton, Warwickshire where his father was a haberdasher, he studied at Rugby Free School and became an apprentice to an apothecary in London, supplying medicine to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He is buried at St. Botolph Church.
He recorded many English folk-names for butterflies, also coining some himself, and wrote some of the first butterfly books that used English names in addition to Latin. He himself was not very proficient in Latin although he was a member of several scholarly societies and an educated gentleman.[1]
He named the White Admiral butterfly, and gave the name Fritillary to another group of butterflies after the Latin word for a chequered dice box. He called skippers "hogs", swallowtails "Royal Williams", walls as "Enfield Eyes" and marbled whites as "Half-Mourners".[1]
Petiver received many specimens, seeds and much other material from correspondents in the American and British colonies. After his death, his collections were purchased by Sir Hans Sloane for £4000, and some of it is now in the Natural History Museum in London.[1]