Marie Firmin Bocourt
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Personnalit%C3%A9s_des_arts_et_des_lettres_-_Firmin_Bocourt.jpg/220px-Personnalit%C3%A9s_des_arts_et_des_lettres_-_Firmin_Bocourt.jpg)
Marie Firmin Bocourt (19 April 1819 – 4 February 1904) was a French zoologist and artist born and died in Paris.
As a young man, he worked as a preparateur for the zoologist Gabriel Bibron (1805–1848), later serving as a museum artist. In 1861, he was sent to Thailand (then called Siam), where he explored the fauna and brought back an important collection of specimens.[1]
He collaborated with Auguste Duméril (1812–1870) on a series called "Mission scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Amérique Centrale", a result of Bocourt's scientific expedition to Mexico and Central America in 1864–66. Dumeril died in 1870, and the project was continued by Bocourt with assistance from Léon Vaillant (1834–1914), François Mocquard (1834–1917) and Fernand Angel.[2][3] With Vaillant, he published a study on fishes, "Études sur les poissons", that was included in "Mission scientifique au Mexique et dans l'Amérique Centrale").[4]
As an artist, he specialized in engravings, doing portraits of contemporary people as well as zoological illustrations.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f9/Delalande%27s_Coua.jpg/220px-Delalande%27s_Coua.jpg)
He has a number of zoological species named after him; including:
- Bocourt's swimming crab, Callinectes bocourti (A. Milne-Edwards, 1879)
- Bocourt's eyelid skink, Phoboscincus bocourti (Brocchi, 1876).[5]
- Bocourt's black-headed snake, Tantilla bocourti (Gunther, 1895).[6]
- Incilius bocourti: a Central American toad.[1]
- Craugastor bocourti and Hyla bocourti: frogs native to Guatemala.[1]
References
- ^ a b c Bo Beolens; Michael Watkins; Michael Grayson (22 April 2013). The Eponym Dictionary of Amphibians. Pelagic Publishing. p. 25. ISBN 978-1-907807-44-2.
- ^ [1] Softcover, Antiquariaat Junk; (Adler. History of Herpetology, pp. 43/44).
- ^ World Cat Titles Etudes sur les reptiles et les batraciens
- ^ WorldCat Titles Études sur les poissons
- ^ Beolens B, Watkins M, Grayson M. (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. (Phoboscincus bocourti, pp. 28-29).
- ^ Tantilla bocourti at the Reptarium.cz Reptile Database. Accessed 5 December 2015.