Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe


Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe was an English entomologist mainly interested in Coleoptera, commonly known as beetles.

Biography

He was born in Penzance, Cornwall and trained at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Appointed surgeon in the Navy he served on Australian, West Indian and Mediterranean stations. He married a Miss Mary Glasson of Cornwall and settled at Trewhiddle near St Austell where his wife's property produced china clay. Widowed in 1851 he settled in London devoting himself to natural history and entomology in particular. The results of collecting trips to Europe, North Africa and the Lower Amazons were poor and Pascoe worked mainly on insects collected by others. His entomological papers listed and described species collected by Alfred Russel Wallace, Robert Templeton and other assiduous collectors but not prolific writers on systematic entomology. He became a Fellow of the Entomological Society in 1854, was president from 1864–1865, a Member of the Société Entomologique de France and belonged to the Belgian and Stettin Societies. He was also a Fellow of the Linnean Society and was on the Council of the Ray Society. His 2,500 types are in the Natural History Museum, London.
Pascoe accepted the fact of evolution but was an opponent to natural selection.

Works