Wollaston (T. Vernon)

An English naturalist who visited our archipelago four times, the first in October 1847 and the last in the summer of 1855. He collected important zoological materials on the different islands of the archipelago, especially in the fields of entomology and malacology, and attempted to visit the Selvagens, aboard a pleasure yacht, but failed to land on those islands. Works:

Insecta Maderensia

, London, 1854;

Catalogue of the Coleopterous Insects of Madeira

, London, 1857;

Testacea Atlantica

, London, 1878; etc.. This last work includes the malacological fauna of the Azores, Madeira, Selvagens, Canaries, Cape Verde, and St. Helena. Wollaston, as a malacologist, is far from being able to compete with the Baron of Castelo de Paiva, Albers, and others, and as an entomologist, he is accused of having created many unnecessary new species. The zoological specimens that belonged to T. Vernon Wollaston are almost all deposited in the British Museum, although there is a collection of shells in the possession of a certain Preston, a dealer in natural history objects (1921).