Hugh Edwin Strickland

Who was Hugh Edwin Strickland?

Hugh Edwin Strickland was an English geologist, ornithologist, naturalist, and systematist.

Strickland was born at Reighton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. He was the second son of Henry Eustatius Strickland of Apperley, Gloucestershire, by his wife Mary, daughter of Edmund Cartwright, inventor of the power loom, and grandson of Sir George Strickland, bart., of Boynton. In 1827 he was sent as a pupil to Thomas Arnold, a family friend.

As a boy he acquired a taste for natural history which dominated his life. He received his early education from private tutors and in 1829 entered Oriel College, Oxford. He attended the anatomical lectures of John Kidd and the geological lectures of William Buckland and he became interested both in zoology and geology. He graduated B.A. in 1831, and proceeded to M.A. in the following year. He married Catherine Dorcas Maule Jardine, the daughter of Sir William Jardine, in 1845. She drew many of the illustrations for Contributions to Ornithology, which were reproduced by papyrography, a process described by Strickland in the first volume of that journal.

Returning to his home at Cracombe House, near Tewkesbury, he began to study the geology of the Vale of Evesham, communicating papers to the Geological Society of London. He also gave much attention to ornithology. Becoming acquainted with Roderick Murchison he was introduced to William John Hamilton and accompanied him in 1835 on a journey through Asia Minor, the Thracian Bosporus and the island of Zante. Hamilton afterwards published the results of this journey and of his subsequent excursion to Armenia in Researches in Asia Minor, Pontus and Armenia.