Discover

'Brian Houghton Hodgson' (February 1, 1800 – May 23, 1894^[1]) was an early
naturalist and ethnologist working in British India where he
was an English civil servant.

Contents

Life and career

Educational reform

Ornithology and natural history

Return to England

Notes

References

External links

Life and career

Hodgson was born at Prestbury, Cheshire. At the age of seventeen he travelled to India as a writer in the British East India Company. He was sent to Kathmandu in Nepal as Assistant Commissioner in 1819, becoming British Resident in 1833. He studied the Nepalese people, producing a number of papers on their languages, literature and religion.

Educational reform

During his service in India, he was a strong opponent of Macaulay and a proponent of education in the local languages and was opposed to the use of English as a medium of instruction.

Ornithology and natural history

Hodgon studied all aspects of natural history around him including material from Nepal, Sikkim and Bengal. He amassed a large collection of birds and mammal skins which he later donated to the British Museum. He discovered a new species of antelope which was named after him, the Tibetan Antelope ''Pantholops hodgsonii''. He also discovered 39 species of mammals and 124 species of birds which had not been described previously, 79 of the bird species were described himself. The zoological collections presented to the British Museum by Hodgson in 1843 and 1858 comprised of 10,499 specimens. In addition to these, the collection also included an enormous number of drawings and coloured sketches of Indian animals by native artists under his supervision. Most of these were subsequently transferred to the Zoological Society of London.
Allan Octavian Hume said of him:
Charles Darwin in his ''Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication'' when discussing the origin of the domestic dog, mentions that Hodgson succeeded in taming the young of the ''Canis primaevus'', an Indian wild dog, and in making them as fond of him and as intelligent as ordinary clogs. Darwin was also indebted to Hodgson's writings for information on the occurrence of dew-claws in the Tibetan mastiff, and for other details of variations which he observed in the cattle, sheep, and goats of India.
''Hodgsonia'' is a genus of cucurbits named after Hodgson. His close friend, Sir Joseph Hooker named a species of Rhododendron after him ''Rhododendron hodgsoni''. Several species of bird including ''Prinia hodgsonii'' are named after him.

Return to England

Hodgson resigned in 1844 and returned to England for a short period. In 1845 he settled in Darjeeling and continued his studies of the peoples of northern India. In 1858 he again returned to England and settled in the Cotswolds. He died at Alderley.

Notes

1. May 28, 1894 According to M. A. Smith in the Fauna of British India. 1941

References

★ Smith, M. A. 1941. Fauna of British India. Reptilia and Amphibia.

★ Barbara and Richard Mearns - ''Biographies for Birdwatchers'' ISBN 0-12-487422-3

★ Lydekker, R. (1902) Some famous Anglo-Indian naturalists of the nineteenth century. Indian Review Vol.3:221-226

★ Cocker, M. & Inskipp, C. (1988) A Himalayan ornithologist: The life and work of Brian Houghton Hodgson. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 89pp.

★ Hunter, W.W. (1896) Life of Brian Houghton Hodgson. John Murray: London. 390pp. Scanned book

External links

★ Natural History Museum, London