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William Ogilby
William Ogilby (1805 – 1 September 1873) was an Irish-born zoologist who was at the forefront of classification and naming of animal species in the 1830s and served as Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1839 to 1847. He removed to Ireland during the Great Famine and later built the grand but architecturally dismal Altinaghree Castle near Donemana, County Tyrone. Mount Ogilby in Queensland was named for him in 1846.
Probably born in County Londonderry in 1805, William Ogilby was an illegitimate son of Leslie Ogilby (c1764-1845) who owned a bleaching green at Lackagh in the parish of Dungiven. The Ogilbys had been active in the linen trade since the mid-eighteenth century, and William's uncle Robert Ogilby (c1761-1839), having amassed a fortune as a linen factor in Dublin, bought the lease of the 22,000-acre Dungiven Castle estate and was reckoned "the wealthiest commoner in the North of Ireland, possessing it is said between ten and twenty thousand pounds a year". The fortune of William's father was more modest but sufficient to buy the 3,170-acre Terkernaghan and Altnachree estate in Donagheady, County Tyrone, in 1829.
Illegitimate births were commonplace among the Ogilbys in the early nineteenth century, and William seems to have been recognised as his father's heir from an early age. He was educated at a small academy kept by a clergyman in Macclesfield before proceeding to Belfast Academical Institution and thence to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1824. He graduated in 1828 and was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1832.
His examination performance at Cambridge was unimpressive, perhaps indicating he neglected the necessary preparatory work in favour of studying natural history and science. His interest in the natural world was of early origin and may have been kindled by relatives. His uncle Alexander Ogilby (c1756-1846) of Kilcatten House, Claudy, had a "curious and valuable collection of fossils" in his "choice little museum"; his maiden aunt Elizabeth Ogilby of Limavady "saved from the ravages of the lapidiary" a natural crystal which, weighing 70lbs, was in 1814 believed to be the largest in Ireland; and his older cousin, Leslie Ogilby, was an "accomplished naturalist and botanist" who successfully cultivated Ireland's rarer native plants and whose bequest of 400 books on scientific topics was an important addition to the Royal Dublin Society's library.
Over the course of a fortnight in March 1827, while still an undergraduate, William Ogilby examined at Cambridge a living specimen of the species he called the "whitefooted Paraduxure". He examined it again in London in August 1828, by which time he was sufficiently conversant with the organic structure of animals and the principles of taxonomy to recognise the creature as a previously undescribed species which he classified as intermediate between the common genet and the common cat and to which he assigned the name Paradoxurus leucopus. His description and classification of the animal appeared in a paper which was printed in The Zoological Journal of January 1829 and was the earliest among his many published contributions to zoological research. The species he identified was included in Coenraad Temminck's 1839 monograph on the genus Paradoxurus.
Ogilby's arrival in London gave him access to the works of Continental naturalists and to specimens of animals and birds held by the British Museum, the Zoological and Linnean Societies, and the East India Company. He later became a regular visitor to the museums at Leiden and Paris, and he observed animal locomotion and behaviour at the Zoological Society's Regent's Park menagerie, the Surrey Zoological Gardens at Newington, the Menagerie du Jardin des plantes at Paris, and in private collections such as that of Lord Derby. He visited Germany (notably Berlin and Frankfurt) on several occasions and the Cape Colony more than once.
The breadth of his knowledge of literary sources from which useful natural history material could be quarried was evident when he alerted Professor Thomas Bell to an editorial note in Swift's Considerations about Maintaining the Poor referring to the importation of frogs to Dublin from England at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
From 1830 onwards, at meetings of the Zoological Society, he read explanatory papers or delivered commentaries on specimens donated to the Society's museum. Some forty of his reports were printed in either full or abstract form in the Society's Transactions and Proceedings during the years to 1841, describing and classifying new examples of mammals and birds from Australia, Africa, the Americas and India. In the same period he also read similar papers to the Linnean Society and commented on fossil specimens to the Geological Society. Publication of his classifications established and named the several genera Cynictis (1833), Madoqua (1836), Pseudocheirus (1837), Chaeropus and Conilurus (1838), and placed many new species within previously established genera.
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William Ogilby
William Ogilby (1805 – 1 September 1873) was an Irish-born zoologist who was at the forefront of classification and naming of animal species in the 1830s and served as Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1839 to 1847. He removed to Ireland during the Great Famine and later built the grand but architecturally dismal Altinaghree Castle near Donemana, County Tyrone. Mount Ogilby in Queensland was named for him in 1846.
Probably born in County Londonderry in 1805, William Ogilby was an illegitimate son of Leslie Ogilby (c1764-1845) who owned a bleaching green at Lackagh in the parish of Dungiven. The Ogilbys had been active in the linen trade since the mid-eighteenth century, and William's uncle Robert Ogilby (c1761-1839), having amassed a fortune as a linen factor in Dublin, bought the lease of the 22,000-acre Dungiven Castle estate and was reckoned "the wealthiest commoner in the North of Ireland, possessing it is said between ten and twenty thousand pounds a year". The fortune of William's father was more modest but sufficient to buy the 3,170-acre Terkernaghan and Altnachree estate in Donagheady, County Tyrone, in 1829.
Illegitimate births were commonplace among the Ogilbys in the early nineteenth century, and William seems to have been recognised as his father's heir from an early age. He was educated at a small academy kept by a clergyman in Macclesfield before proceeding to Belfast Academical Institution and thence to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1824. He graduated in 1828 and was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1832.
His examination performance at Cambridge was unimpressive, perhaps indicating he neglected the necessary preparatory work in favour of studying natural history and science. His interest in the natural world was of early origin and may have been kindled by relatives. His uncle Alexander Ogilby (c1756-1846) of Kilcatten House, Claudy, had a "curious and valuable collection of fossils" in his "choice little museum"; his maiden aunt Elizabeth Ogilby of Limavady "saved from the ravages of the lapidiary" a natural crystal which, weighing 70lbs, was in 1814 believed to be the largest in Ireland; and his older cousin, Leslie Ogilby, was an "accomplished naturalist and botanist" who successfully cultivated Ireland's rarer native plants and whose bequest of 400 books on scientific topics was an important addition to the Royal Dublin Society's library.
Over the course of a fortnight in March 1827, while still an undergraduate, William Ogilby examined at Cambridge a living specimen of the species he called the "whitefooted Paraduxure". He examined it again in London in August 1828, by which time he was sufficiently conversant with the organic structure of animals and the principles of taxonomy to recognise the creature as a previously undescribed species which he classified as intermediate between the common genet and the common cat and to which he assigned the name Paradoxurus leucopus. His description and classification of the animal appeared in a paper which was printed in The Zoological Journal of January 1829 and was the earliest among his many published contributions to zoological research. The species he identified was included in Coenraad Temminck's 1839 monograph on the genus Paradoxurus.
Ogilby's arrival in London gave him access to the works of Continental naturalists and to specimens of animals and birds held by the British Museum, the Zoological and Linnean Societies, and the East India Company. He later became a regular visitor to the museums at Leiden and Paris, and he observed animal locomotion and behaviour at the Zoological Society's Regent's Park menagerie, the Surrey Zoological Gardens at Newington, the Menagerie du Jardin des plantes at Paris, and in private collections such as that of Lord Derby. He visited Germany (notably Berlin and Frankfurt) on several occasions and the Cape Colony more than once.
The breadth of his knowledge of literary sources from which useful natural history material could be quarried was evident when he alerted Professor Thomas Bell to an editorial note in Swift's Considerations about Maintaining the Poor referring to the importation of frogs to Dublin from England at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
From 1830 onwards, at meetings of the Zoological Society, he read explanatory papers or delivered commentaries on specimens donated to the Society's museum. Some forty of his reports were printed in either full or abstract form in the Society's Transactions and Proceedings during the years to 1841, describing and classifying new examples of mammals and birds from Australia, Africa, the Americas and India. In the same period he also read similar papers to the Linnean Society and commented on fossil specimens to the Geological Society. Publication of his classifications established and named the several genera Cynictis (1833), Madoqua (1836), Pseudocheirus (1837), Chaeropus and Conilurus (1838), and placed many new species within previously established genera.