James Petiver

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.

Life

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.

Scientific work

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]

Works

Gazophylacium (1702-6) - an illustrated catalogue of British insects
Papilionum Brittaniae Icones (1717) - included 80 British butterflies
1698 An account of some Indian plants etc. with their names, descriptions and vertues; communicated in a letter from Mr. James Petiver...to Mr. Samuel Brown, surgeon at Fort St. George, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London.
1700-1703 - An account of part of a collection of curious plants and drugs, lately given to the Royal Society of the East India Company, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society

The standard author abbreviation Petiver is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.^[2]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Michael A. Salmon, Peter Marren, Basil Harley (2000). The Aurelian legacy: British butterflies and their collectors. University of California Press. pp. 103–105.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ International Plant Names Index. Petiver.

External links

Allen, D. E. (2004). "Petiver, James (c.1665–1718)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22041. Retrieved 2011-05-17. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
[1]--Digitised versions of Aquatilium Animalium Amboinæ, etc.;Gazophylacium naturae et artisand Pteri-Graphia Americana at GDZ Göttingen.

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[aurel-1] Michael A. Salmon, Peter Marren, Basil Harley (2000). The Aurelian legacy: British butterflies and their collectors. University of California Press. pp. 103–105.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[2] International Plant Names Index. Petiver.

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