William Harry Evans (1876–1956), English entomologist (Lepidoptera)

Active in India.

Brigadier William Harry Evans, CSI CIE DSO, was born on 22nd July, 1876, at Shillong, Assam, the third son of General Sir Horace Moule Evans KCB. At the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Engineers. He was posted East in 1898, and in that year he was already collecting butterflies in Chitra! His final post was with Western Command at Quetta as Chief Engineer. Stoically, as was so very characteristic of him, he put in a full day's work daily at the Museum throughout the war, at a window facing south on to Cromwell Road, where one morning he was caught in the explosion of a German Vl rocket bomb which burst on the roadway about 100 yards away. Cut, bruised, badly shaken and with his hearing seriously affected (permanently, as it later transpired), his only complaint was of the loss of the specimens he had been examining, and of which nothing remained but the pins and labels. However, within hours he was at work again, though it was little short of a miracle that he was not killed. His task was to complete the Revision of the Hesperiidae of the World, as he so often said "before he died". Often, during his last few years, we wondered, as he did, whether death would win, but the victory was his. For more see his obituary in The Lepidopterists' News.

Author abbreviation: W.H. Evans

Taxon names authored

(List may be incomplete)

• 1,327 taxon names authored by William Harry Evans

Publications

(List may be incomplete)