Thomas Belt an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 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...

 and naturalist, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1832, and educated in that city. He is remembered for his work on the geology of gold bearing minerals, glacial geology, and for his description of the mutualistic relationship between certain bullthorn Acacia

Acacia

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, whereas the majority of Australian acacias are not...

 species and their pseudomyrmex

Pseudomyrmex

Pseudomyrmex is a genus of stinging, wasp-like ants in the family Formicidae . They are large eyed, slender ants with an arboreal habitat. They are found exclusively in the New World in tropical and subtropical regions...

 ants.

Early life

As a youth Belt became actively interested in 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...

 through the Tyneside Naturalists Field Club. In 1852 he went to Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 and for about eight years worked at the gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

-diggings, where he acquired a practical knowledge of ore

Ore

An ore is a type of rock that contains minerals with important elements including metals. The ores are extracted through mining; these are then refined to extract the valuable element....

 deposits. In 1860 he proceeded to Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

 to take charge of some gold-mines, and there met with a serious injury, which led to his return to England.

In 1861 Belt issued a separate work entitled Mineral Veins: an Enquiry into their Origin, founded on a Study of the Auriferous Quartz Veins of Australia. Later on he was engaged for about three years at Dolgelly, another though small gold-mining region, and here he carefully investigated the rocks

Rock (geology)

In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...

 and fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s of the Lingula Flags, his observations being published in an important and now classic memoir in the Geological Magazine for 1867.

Nicaragua

In the following year he was appointed to take charge of some mines in Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

, where he passed four active and adventurous years the results being given in his The Naturalist in Nicaragua (1874), a widely regarded work. In this volume the author expressed his views on the former presence of glacier

Glacier

A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...

s in that country.

In this book, he also first described the mutualistic relationship of the ant we now know as Pseudomyrmex spinicola is a species of red myrmecophyte

Myrmecophyte

Myrmecophyte is a plant that lives in a mutualistic association with a colony of ants. There are over 100 different genera of myrmecophytes. These plants possess structural adaptations that provide ants with food and/or shelter. These specialized structures include domatia, food bodies, and...

-inhabiting neotropical ant

Ant

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...

s which are found only in Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

 and Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. They live in the thorns of a tropical tree, Acacia collinsii

Acacia collinsii

Acacia collinsii is a species of flowering plant. It grows in secondary succession in seasonally dry ecosystems in southern Central America, where it exhibits a symbiotic relationship with several species of ant...

, feeding on nectaries

Nectar (plant)

Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants. It is produced in glands called nectaries, either within the flowers, in which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide anti-herbivore protection...

 along with the protein and lipid

Lipid

Lipids constitute a broad group of naturally occurring molecules that include fats, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins , monoglycerides, diglycerides, triglycerides, phospholipids, and others...

-rich pods produced by the plant for the ants and now known as Belsian bodies

Beltian body

A Beltian body is a structure found on the leaves of some species of Acacia. Beltian bodies, named after Thomas Belt, are found on the tips of each leaflet and are rich in lipids and proteins and often red in colour. They are believed to have evolved in a symbiotic relationship with ants...

 (or Beltian bodies) in honor of Belt. .

In subsequent papers Belt dealt boldly with the phenomena of the glacial period in Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 and in various parts of the world.

Death and burial

After many further expeditions to Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

 and Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

, he died in Denver Colorado, on the 21st of September 1878 and was buried there in the Riverside Cemetery

Riverside Cemetery (Denver, Colorado)

Riverside Cemetery, established in 1876, is Denver, Colorado's oldest operating cemetery. More than 67,000 people are buried there, including 1,000 veterans.-Location and operation:...

.

External links

• The naturalist in Nicaragua (London, J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, 1911)