Charles Thorold Wood
Charles Thorold Wood, senior (15 January 1777 – 13 March 1852) was an
ornithologists. Several accounts have confounded him with his namesake son who wrote The Ornithological Guide (1835).[2] Charles junior also wrote under the initials S.D.W. Neville wrote two books including British Song Birds (1836) which was dedicated to Edward Blyth, and The ornithologists' text-book (1836) dedicated to John Latham
.
Life
Wood was born the eldest of the 9 children of Willoughby Wood, of
Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and his wife, Elizabeth Thorold. Charles matriculated at Merton College, Oxford on 26 October 1795.[3]
Wood became a captain in the
Foston Hall in Derbyshire and moved to Sudbury Hall and later Campsall Hall north of Doncaster.[7] Their sons Charles junior and Neville were both amateurs ornithologists. Charles wrote The Ornithological Guide (1835) at the age of eighteen and his brother Neville wrote British Song Birds (1836) the next year. Neville studied medicine and qualified MD and FRCP from Edinburgh. Willoughby (1814–1875) and Charles junior also had an interest in phrenology which was then a craze. Charles' Ornithological Guide dealt with standardizing the names of English birds. A basic idea that he promoted was that the name of a bird in English need to be parallel to the genus in the binomial. Charles junior also wrote under the initials S.D.W., describing the genus Dumetella in 1837.[8] Neville's book made use of ideas from phrenology in the descriptions of birds. Neville published another book reviewing several contemporary works on birds along with his own commentaries. Reviews of Neville's books were not very positive, except for one published in The naturalist, a periodical in which Neville was an editor. Among the more severe critics was James Rennie, whom Neville called as a “Bare-faced Crow (Corvus nudirostris) of King's College”.[9]
References
- ^ "Deaths". The Lancet: 668. 3 April 1886.
- ^ Mullens, W. H.; Swann, H. K. (1919). A bibliography of British ornithology. London. pp. 661–662.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
- ^ John Debrett, George William Collen, The Baronetage of England (1840), p. 544; Google Books.
- ^ "Double portrait of William Thorold Wood and Charles Thorold Wood". Bridgeman Images. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
- ^ "Sir Henry Raeburn, R.A. (1756-1823)". Christies. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
- ^ "Foston Hall, in Derbyshire, the residence of Mr. Charles Thorold". The Spectaor Archive. Retrieved 8 November 2017.
- ^ Olson, Storrs L. (1989). "The Original Description and Author of the Genus Dumetella (Mimidae)" (PDF). Wilson Bulletin. 101 (4): 633–637.
- ISSN 0260-9541.