Walter Samuel Millard - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Walter Samuel Millard was a British entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...

and naturalist

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...

who was honorary secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society

Bombay Natural History Society

The Bombay Natural History Society, founded on 15 September 1883, is one of the largest non-governmental organizations in India engaged in conservation and biodiversity research. It supports many research efforts through grants, and publishes the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. Many...

and editor of the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society
Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society
The Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society is a natural history journal published several times a year by the Bombay Natural History Society...

from 1906 to 1920, co-author of the classic, Some Beautiful Indian Trees, and the driving force behind the Mammal Survey of the Indian subcontinent

Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent, also Indian Subcontinent, Indo-Pak Subcontinent or South Asian Subcontinent is a region of the Asian continent on the Indian tectonic plate from the Hindu Kush or Hindu Koh, Himalayas and including the Kuen Lun and Karakoram ranges, forming a land mass which extends...

conducted by the society between 1911 and 1923.

Early life

Millard, the seventh son of Rev. J.H. Millard, was born in Huntingdon

Huntingdon

Huntingdon is a market town in Cambridgeshire, England. The town was chartered by King John in 1205. It is the traditional county town of Huntingdonshire, and is currently the seat of the Huntingdonshire district council. It is known as the birthplace in 1599 of Oliver Cromwell.-History:Huntingdon...

, England

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...

in 1864. He came out to Bombay at age 20 to assist in the wine business of Herbert (Musgrave) Phipson, then Honorary Secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and the editor of its journal. Joining the Society in 1893, he was made assistant editor of the Journal. Upon Phipson's retirement in 1906, Millard became editor and remained so until 1920.

Journal editor and gardening

During the years of Phipson's editorship, the Journal of BNHS had emerged as the premier natural history journal in Asia. Although other excellent Asian journals in the field were being published during Millard's editorial tenure, the Journal of BNHS remained the only one with both scholarly and general interest articles. During this time the Society began to publish serial articles from the Journal in book form. One of the best received such books was Stuart Baker's

E. C. Stuart Baker

Edward Charles Stuart Baker CIE OBE FZS FLS was a British ornithologist and police officer.-Life and career:Baker was educated at Trinity College, Stratford-upon-Avon and in 1883 followed his father into the Indian Police Service. He spent most of his career in India in the Assam Police, rising to...

Indian Ducks and their Allies (1908).

Millard's main avocation

Avocation

An avocation is an activity that one engages in as a hobby outside one's main occupation. There are many examples of people whose professions were the ways that they made their livings, but for whom their activities outside of their workplaces were their true passions in life...

was gardening, especially the cultivation of flowering trees. He is credited with introducing the Burmese Cassia renigera, the Pterocarpus indicus, and the South American Gliricidia maculata to the city of Bombay. Upon his suggestion, Fr. Ethelbert Blatter

Ethelbert Blatter

Ethelbert Blatter SJ was a Swiss Jesuit priest and pioneering botanist in British India. Author of five books and over sixty papers on the flora of the Indian subcontinent, he was Principal and Professor of Botany at St Xavier College, Bombay and Vice-President of the Bombay Natural History Society...

, SJ

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

, Principal and Professor of Botany at St Xavier's College, Bombay, wrote the series Palms of India for the Journal. A few years later Blatter and Millard coauthored the series Some Beautiful Indian Trees, resulting in a book of the same name, which has since become a classic, and remains in print. Salim Ali

Salim Ali (ornithologist)

Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali was an Indian ornithologist and naturalist. Known as the "birdman of India", Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop ornithology...

credited his initiation into ornithology as a young boy to Millard, who helped identify a Yellow-throated Sparrow he had shot.

Mammal survey

R. C. Wroughton

Robert Charles Wroughton was an officer in the Indian Forest Service from 10 December 1871 to 1904....

, who, after retiring from the Indian Forest Service

Indian Forest Service

The Indian Forest Service is the Forestry service of India. It is one of the three All India Services of the Indian government, along with the Indian Administrative Service and Indian Police Service; its employees are recruited by the national government but serve under the state governments or...

, was studying mammals 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...

, began to correspond with Millard and urged him to employ a collector (and taxidermist) for collecting small mammals for the Society. In 1910, C. A. Crump fortuitously arrived in Bombay and offered his services as collector. Calling an urgent meeting of the Society, Millard helped build consensus for both employing Crump and launching a fund drive for a mammal survey. Within a year, enough funds had been raised to hire four full-time collectors, and with that the Mammal Survey had begun. Lasting 12 years, the survey helped build collections that became the basis for R.I. Pocock's

Reginald Innes Pocock

Reginald Innes Pocock F.R.S. was a British zoologist.Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol, the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. He began showing interest in natural history at St. Edward's School, Oxford. He received tutoring in zoology from Sir Edward Poulton, and was allowed...

two volumes, Mammalia, in the series The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Both the commencement and the success of the survey depended largely on Millard's fund-raising and organizational work; this, he undertook in addition to his work as editor of the Journal and as manager of his wine business, Messrs. Phipson and Co.

Millard was an early conservationist. Through his efforts, a "close time" was established for the hunting of certain birds, and other species were given extra protection. After he left India in 1920, Millard spent many years in retirement, managing the Bombay Natural History Society's business in London. W. S. Millard died on 21 March 1952.

Early life

Journal editor and gardening

Mammal survey

See also