Philip Lutley Sclater (1829-1913) was a person for whom the term “indefatigable” might have been invented. His astonishing diversity of interests and contributions to numerous organisations included being a founder member of both the British Ornithologists’ Union (BOU) and the British Ornithologists’ Club (BOC), as well as subsequently playing a major role in the running of each.
Born in Hampshire to a wealthy family, he was fascinated by natural history, in particular birds, from an early age. After time spent at Winchester College, he was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University in 1845, although too young to take up residence until 1846. Here he met Hugh Strickland, a Reader in Geology with a passion for ornithology, who taught him how to make bird skins, after which he promptly began assembling a collection. Awarded a B.A. in 1849, comprising a first in mathematics and a pass in classics, he then spent two further years in Oxford largely devoted to natural history and, helped by visits to mainland Europe, to learning French, German and Italian. Emerging in 1851 with an M.A., he promptly began studying law at Lincoln’s Inn and was subsequently both called to the bar and admitted as a Fellow of Corpus Christi in 1855.
In 1856, Sclater made a long journey to North America, including both travelling by foot and small boat from the western end of Lake Superior down to the Mississippi and spending a month at the bird collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, then probably the best in the USA. Back in Britain, he combined practicing at the bar with the study of natural history; already by this time having published approaching 100 ornithological papers, he was increasingly focusing on the birds of Central and South America that were to become his speciality. His fascination with geographical distribution led in 1858 to one of his premier scientific publications, in which he proposed division of the world into the six now familiar geographical regions. By now already a Council member of the Zoological Society, in 1858 he was one of the founders of the BOU, becoming the first editor of its journal, The Ibis, in 1859.
1859 was also the year in which, strongly supported by fellow Council members Richard Owen and William Yarrell, Sclater was appointed to the post that would become the core of his professional life, that of Secretary of the Zoological Society, in which he spent 43 years up to his retirement in 1903. Plunging into a major, and much needed, reorganization of its affairs, he presided over substantial and widely recognized improvements to its membership, publications, buildings and financial position. Quite soon thereafter, in 1862, he married, going on to have six children; the eldest, William, shared his father’s interest in birds and would, like him, become a founder member of the BOC. Despite the demanding nature of his job, and major involvement in other societies such as the Royal Geographical and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Sclater continued publishing a seemingly never-ending stream of research papers, as well as being either editor or co-editor of The Ibis for all but 12 of the 53 years from 1859 to 1912.
In 1886, having decided to present his personal collection of approaching 10,000 specimens of predominantly American bird skins to the British Museum (Natural History) (BMNH), Sclater agreed to use his deep knowledge of Neotropical ornithology, and two years of his (spare) time, to produce three and a half volumes of the great 27-volume Catalogue of Birds in the British Museum, then in production under the editorship of his good friend and BMNH curator of birds, Richard Bowdler Sharpe (see Founders Blog no. 1). Along with Bowdler Sharpe, Sclater subsequently became a key founder member (and first chairman) in 1892 of the BOC, conceived to enable BOU members and their guests, whether based in Britain or returning from stints abroad, to socialise regularly over dinner as well as to participate in an array of short talks and specimen presentations, focusing in particular on taxonomic and distributional ornithology, subsequently written up in a bulletin. They clearly filled a need in doing this, given that the BOC is still going strong over 130 years later!
Over the course of a life during which he produced approaching 1,500 scientific publications, honours increasingly came to showered on Percy Sclater, including election to Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1861, receipt of an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Oxford University in 1901, and the award of Honorary or Corresponding Membership of over 40 other societies in Britain and overseas. Living latterly in Hampshire, his home county, he loved riding to the hunt until a late age, sadly dying in a carriage accident in 1913, aged 83. His was a life of extraordinary productivity and unfailing assistance to many of the numerous fellow ornithologists to whom he was a friend.
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Robert Prŷs-Jones
