Scientific Work
Petiver visited the Netherlands in 1711 to study with Dutch entomologists. 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.
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".
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.
Read more about this topic: James Petiver
Famous quotes containing the words scientific and/or work:
“... is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“We all agree now—by “we” I mean intelligent people under sixty—that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves. Unluckily, the matter does not end there: a rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.”
—Clive Bell (1881–1962)