Hugh Falconer
Encyclopedia
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
(29 February 1808 – 31 July 1865) was a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
geologist
Geologist
A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth as well as the processes and history that has shaped it. Geologists usually engage in studying geology. Geologists, studying more of an applied science than a theoretical one, must approach Geology using...
, botanist, palaeontologist and paleoanthropologist. He studied the flora
Flora
Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...
, fauna
Fauna
Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...
and geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
of India, Assam
Assam
Assam , also, rarely, Assam Valley and formerly the Assam Province , is a northeastern state of India and is one of the most culturally and geographically distinct regions of the country...
and Burma, and was the first to suggest the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis...
. He was the first to discover the Siwalik fossil beds, and may also have been the first person to discover a fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
ape
Ape
Apes are Old World anthropoid mammals, more specifically a clade of tailless catarrhine primates, belonging to the biological superfamily Hominoidea. The apes are native to Africa and South-east Asia, although in relatively recent times humans have spread all over the world...
.
Early life
Falconer was the youngest son of David Falconer of ForresForres
Forres , is a town and former royal burgh situated in the north of Scotland on the Moray coast, approximately 30 miles east of Inverness. Forres has been a winner of the Scotland in Bloom award on several occasions...
, Elginshire. In 1826 Hugh Falconer graduated at the University of Aberdeen
University of Aberdeen
The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...
, where he studied natural history
Natural history
Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...
. Afterward, he studied medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
in the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
, taking the degree of M.D.
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
in 1829. During this period he zealously attended the botanical classes of Prof. R. Graham (1786–1845), and those on geology by Prof. Robert Jameson
Robert Jameson
thumb|Robert JamesonProfessor Robert Jameson, FRS FRSE was a Scottish naturalist and mineralogist.As Regius Professor at the University of Edinburgh for fifty years, Jameson is notable for his advanced scholarship in natural history, his superb museum collection, and for his tuition of Charles...
, the teacher of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
.
Falconer became an assistant-surgeon on the Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
establishment of the British East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
in 1830. Upon his arrival in Bengal he made an examination of the fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
bones from Ava, upper Burma in the possession of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. His description of the fossils, published soon afterward, gave him a recognized position among the scientists of India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. Early in 1831 he was posted to the army station at Meerut, India, in the North Western Provinces.
Siwalik Hills
In 1832, Falconer became Superintendent of the Saharanpur botanical garden, IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, succeeding John Royle
John Forbes Royle
John Forbes Royle , British botanist and teacher of materia medica, was born in Kanpur in 1799. Entering the service of the East India Company as assistant surgeon, he devoted himself to studying botany and geology, and made large collections among the Himalaya Mountains...
. Falconer remained at Saharanpur until 1842, during which time he became widely known for his study of fossil mammals in the Siwalik Hills. Falconer observed long periods of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
ary stasis in these mammals with short periods of rapid evolutionary change throughout geological time. This research shows great foresight; Niles Eldredge
Niles Eldredge
Niles Eldredge is an American paleontologist, who, along with Stephen Jay Gould, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972.-Education:...
and Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
developed the same basic theory a century later, a theory known as punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis...
.
Falconer and his associates may have made the first discovery of a fossil ape, in the 1830s in the Neogene
Neogene
The Neogene is a geologic period and system in the International Commission on Stratigraphy Geologic Timescale starting 23.03 ± 0.05 million years ago and ending 2.588 million years ago...
deposits in the Siwalik Hills. In the Tertiary
Tertiary
The Tertiary is a deprecated term for a geologic period 65 million to 2.6 million years ago. The Tertiary covered the time span between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary...
strata
Stratum
In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers...
of the Siwalik Hills in 1831 Falconer discovered bones of crocodiles, tortoises and other animals. With others, he later brought to light a sub-tropical fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
fauna
Fauna
Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...
of unexampled extent and richness, including remains of Mastodon
Mastodon
Mastodons were large tusked mammal species of the extinct genus Mammut which inhabited Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Central America from the Oligocene through Pleistocene, 33.9 mya to 11,000 years ago. The American mastodon is the most recent and best known species of the group...
, the colossal ruminant
Ruminant
A ruminant is a mammal of the order Artiodactyla that digests plant-based food by initially softening it within the animal's first compartment of the stomach, principally through bacterial actions, then regurgitating the semi-digested mass, now known as cud, and chewing it again...
Sivatherium
Sivatherium
Sivatherium ' is an extinct genus of giraffid that ranged throughout Africa to Southern Asia . The African species, S...
, and the enormous extinct tortoise
Tortoise
Tortoises are a family of land-dwelling reptiles of the order of turtles . Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise...
Colossochelys Atlas
Testudo atlas
Colossochelys atlas, formerly known as Testudo atlas, and originally described as Geochelone atlas, is an extinct species of cryptodire turtle from the Pleistocene period, about 2 million years ago...
. Falconer also published a geological description of the Siwálik Hills in 1834. For these valuable discoveries he and Proby Cautley
Proby Cautley
Sir Proby Thomas Cautley KCB , English engineer and palaeontologist, born in Suffolk, is best known for conceiving and supervising the construction of the Ganges canal in India...
(1802–1871) together received the Wollaston Medal
Wollaston Medal
The Wollaston Medal is a scientific award for geology, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London.The medal is named after William Hyde Wollaston, and was first awarded in 1831...
from the Geological Society of London
Geological Society of London
The Geological Society of London is a learned society based in the United Kingdom with the aim of "investigating the mineral structure of the Earth"...
, its highest award, in 1837.
In 1834 Falconer was asked by a Commission of Bengal to investigate the commercial feasibility of growing tea
Tea
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...
in India; upon his recommendation tea plants
Camellia sinensis
Camellia sinensis is the species of plant whose leaves and leaf buds are used to produce Chinese tea. It is of the genus Camellia , a genus of flowering plants in the family Theaceae. White tea, green tea, oolong, pu-erh tea and black tea are all harvested from this species, but are processed...
were introduced, and the resultant black tea
Black tea
Black tea is a variety of tea that is more oxidized than the oolong, green, and white varieties.All four varieties are made from leaves of the shrub Camellia sinensis. Black tea is generally stronger in flavor and contains more caffeine than the less oxidized teas. Two principal varieties of the...
became competitive with Chinese teas.
Falconer left India in 1842, because of ill health. He brought with him 70 large chests of dried plants and 48 cases of fossils, bones and geological specimens. He then travelled throughout Europe making geological observations and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
in 1845. Continuing in the service of the British East India Company as a naturalist, he pursued research at the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
and East India House
East India House
East India House in Leadenhall Street in the City of London in England was the headquarters of the British East India Company. It was built on the foundations of the Elizabethan mansion Craven House, the London residence of Sir William Craven, Lord Mayor of London, to designs by the merchant and...
and prepared casts of the most remarkable fossils for the leading museums of Europe.
Calcutta
In 1847 Falconer became superintendent of the Calcutta Botanical GardenIndian Botanical Gardens
The Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden is situated in Shibpur, Howrah near Kolkata. They are commonly known as the Calcutta Botanical Garden, and previously as the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta...
and professor of botany in the Medical College, Calcutta, near his older brother, Alexander Falconer, a Calcutta merchant. Hugh Falconer served as an advisor to the Indian government and the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Bengal, the de facto colonial "Department of Agriculture". He prepared an important report on the teak
Teak
Teak is the common name for the tropical hardwood tree species Tectona grandis and its wood products. Tectona grandis is native to south and southeast Asia, mainly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma, but is naturalized and cultivated in many countries, including those in Africa and the...
forests of Tenasserim, and this saved them from destruction by reckless felling. Through his recommendation, the cultivation of the cinchona
Cinchona
Cinchona or Quina is a genus of about 38 species in the family Rubiaceae, native to tropical South America. They are large shrubs or small trees growing 5–15 metres in height with evergreen foliage. The leaves are opposite, rounded to lanceolate and 10–40 cm long. The flowers are white, pink...
in the Indian empire was introduced for the medicinal use
Pharmacology
Pharmacology is the branch of medicine and biology concerned with the study of drug action. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function...
of its bark in the treatment of malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
.
Having to leave India again in 1855 because of ill health, he spent the remainder of his life examining and comparing fossil species in England and the Continent corresponding to those which he had discovered in India, notably the species of mastodon, elephant and rhinoceros. He also described some new mammalia from the Purbeck
Purbeck
Purbeck is a local government district in Dorset, England. The district is named after the Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula that forms a large proportion of the district's area. However the district extends significantly further north and west than the traditional boundary of the Isle of Purbeck along...
strata of Wessex
Wessex
The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...
. Turning to the subject of human origins, he reported on the bone caves of Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
, Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
, Gower
Gower Peninsula
Gower or the Gower Peninsula is a peninsula in south Wales, jutting from the coast into the Bristol Channel, and administratively part of the City and County of Swansea. Locally it is known as "Gower"...
and Brixham
Brixham
Brixham is a small fishing town and civil parish in the county of Devon, in the south-west of England. Brixham is at the southern end of Torbay, across the bay from Torquay, and is a fishing port. Fishing and tourism are its major industries. At the time of the 2001 census it had a population of...
.
Falconer was vice-president of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
1863-1864. Although suffering from exposure and overwork, Falconer returned hastily from Gibraltar to support Charles Darwin's claim to the Copley Medal
Copley Medal
The Copley Medal is an award given by the Royal Society of London for "outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science, and alternates between the physical sciences and the biological sciences"...
in 1864. Falconer succumbed in London, England, on 31 July 1865 from rheumatic disease of the heart and lungs. His body was interred at Kensal Green
Kensal Green Cemetery
Kensal Green Cemetery is a cemetery in Kensal Green, in the west of London, England. It was immortalised in the lines of G. K. Chesterton's poem The Rolling English Road from his book The Flying Inn: "For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen; Before we go to Paradise by way of...
.
The flower Rhododendron falconeri was named after Falconer by Joseph Dalton Hooker
Joseph Dalton Hooker
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker OM, GCSI, CB, MD, FRS was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Hooker was a founder of geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend...
.
Falconer's botanical notes, with 450 coloured drawings of Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
i and Indian plants, were deposited in the library at Kew Gardens, together with some of the specimens he collected. A marble bust was placed in the rooms of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
of London, and another in the Asiatic Society
Asiatic Society
The Asiatic Society was founded by Sir William Jones on January 15, 1784 in a meeting presided over by Sir Robert Chambers, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the Fort William in Calcutta, then capital of the British Raj, to enhance and further the cause of Oriental research. At the time of...
of Bengal, Calcutta. A competitive Falconer scholarship of £100 per year was created for graduates in science or medicine of the University of Edinburgh.
The Falconer Museum in Forres exhibits the story of Hugh Falconer as well as stories of local and Scottish interest.
Works
- Hugh Falconer and Proby T. CautleyProby CautleySir Proby Thomas Cautley KCB , English engineer and palaeontologist, born in Suffolk, is best known for conceiving and supervising the construction of the Ganges canal in India...
, Fauna Antiqua Sivalensis, being the Fossil Zoology of the Sewalik Hills, in the North of India, Part I, Proboscidea, London (1846), with a series of 107 plates by G. H. Ford appearing between 1846 and 1849. - Palæontological memoirs and notes of the late Hugh Falconer, edited, with a biographical sketch, by Charles MurchisonCharles Murchison (physician)Charles Murchison was a British physician and a noted authority on fevers and diseases of the liver.-Early life:...
, M.D., 2 vols., London, R. Hardwicke (1868). OCLC: 2847098. - Hugh Falconer, Darwin Correspondence Project: extended bibliography
- Falconer's works were documented in the Royal Society's Catalogue of Scientific Papers, vol. ii (1968).
Literature
- Patrick J. Boylan, The Falconer papers, Forres, Leicester: Leicestershire Museums, Art Galleries and Records Service (1977).
- Grace, Lady Prestwich, Essays descriptive and biographical, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood (1901).
- Charles T. Gaudin, "Modifications apportées par M. Falconer à la faune du Val d'Arno", Bulletin des Séances de la Société Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles 6: 130-1 (1859).
- Patrick J. Boylan, "The controversy of the Moulin-Quignon jaw: the role of Hugh Falconer," in Images of the Earth: Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences, Ludmilla J. Jordanova and Roy S. Porter, eds., Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks., British Society for the History of Science. (1979) ISBN 0906450004
- Leonard G. Wilson, "Brixham Cave and Sir Charles Lyell's . . . the Antiquity of man: the roots of Hugh Falconer's attack on Lyell," Archives of Natural History 23: 79-97 (1996).
- Kenneth A. R. Kennedy and Russell L. Ciochon, "A canine tooth from the Siwaliks: first recorded discovery of a fossil ape?" Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 14, No. 3 (July, 1999). ISSN 0393-9375 (Print) 1824-310X (Online).
- Anne O'Connor, "Hugh Falconer, Joseph Prestwich and the Gower caves", Studies in Speliology, Vol. 14, pp 75 – 79 (2006).
See also
- TeaTeaTea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...
- TeakTeakTeak is the common name for the tropical hardwood tree species Tectona grandis and its wood products. Tectona grandis is native to south and southeast Asia, mainly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma, but is naturalized and cultivated in many countries, including those in Africa and the...
- CinchonaCinchonaCinchona or Quina is a genus of about 38 species in the family Rubiaceae, native to tropical South America. They are large shrubs or small trees growing 5–15 metres in height with evergreen foliage. The leaves are opposite, rounded to lanceolate and 10–40 cm long. The flowers are white, pink...
- BotanyBotanyBotany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
- PaleoanthropologyPaleoanthropologyPaleoanthropology, which combines the disciplines of paleontology and physical anthropology, is the study of ancient humans as found in fossil hominid evidence such as petrifacted bones and footprints.-19th century:...
- PaleontologyPaleontologyPaleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...
- GeologyGeologyGeology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...