Reginald Innes Pocock

Reginald Innes Pocock, F.R.S.^[1] (4 March 1863 – 9 August 1947) was a British zoologist.^[2]

Reginald Innes Pocock
Born	(1863-03-04)4 March 1863 Clifton, Bristol
Died	9 August 1947(1947-08-09) (aged 84)
Nationality	British
Scientific career
Fields	Zoology
Institutions	Natural History Museum, London, London Zoo

Pocock was born in Clifton, Bristol, the fourth son of Rev. Nicholas Pocock and Edith Prichard. He began showing interest in natural history at St. Edward's School, Oxford. He received tutoring in zoology from Sir Edward Poulton, and was allowed to explore comparative anatomy at the Oxford Museum. He studied biology and geology at University College, Bristol, under Conwy Lloyd Morgan and William Johnson Sollas. In 1885, he became an assistant at the Natural History Museum, and worked in the section of entomology for a year. He was put in charge of the collections of Arachnida and Myriapoda. He was also given the task to arrange the British birds collections, in the course of which he developed a lasting interest in ornithology. The 200 papers he published in his 18 years at the museum soon brought him recognition as an authority on Arachnida and Myriapoda; he described between 300 and 400 species of millipedes alone,^[3] and also described the scorpion genus Brachistosternus.^[4] In 1929, he proposed the family Nandiniidae, with the genus Nandinia as its sole member. He argued that it differs from the Aeluroidea by the structure and shape of its ear canal and mastoid part of the temporal bone.^[5]

In 1904, he left to become superintendent of the London Zoo, remaining so until his retirement in 1923. He then worked, as a voluntary researcher, in the British Museum, in the mammals department.

He described the leopon in a 1912 letter to The Field, based on examination of a skin sent to him by W. S. Millard, the secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society.

His brother Edward Innes Pocock played international rugby for Scotland and was part of Cecil Rhodes' Pioneer Column. His great grandfather was marine artist Captain Nicholas Pocock.

Selected works

• Pocock, R. I. (1893). "On some points in the morphology of the Arachnida (s.s) with notes on the classification of the group". Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 6. 11 (61): 1–19. doi:10.1080/00222939308677457.
• Pocock, R. I. (1900). The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Arachnida. London: Trustees of the British Museum.
• Pocock, R. I. (1901). "Some new and old genera of South American Aviculariidae". The Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 7. 8 (48): 540–555. doi:10.1080/03745480109443359.
• Pocock, R. I. (1902). "Arachnida. Scorpiones, Pedipalpi, and Solifugae". Biologia Centrali-Americana: zoology, botany and archaeology. London: R. H. Porter.
• Pocock, R. I. (1903). "On some genera and species of South-American Aviculariidae". Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 7. 11 (61): 81–115. doi:10.1080/00222930308678729.
• Pocock, R. I. (1917). "The Classification of existing Felidae". The Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 8. XX: 329–350. doi:10.1080/00222931709487018.
• Pocock, R. I. (1930). "The Panthers and Ounces of Asia". Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. 34 (1): 65–82.
• Pocock, R. I. (1932). "The marbled, Pardofelis marmorata, cat and some other Oriental species, with a definition of a new genus of the Felidae". Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 102 (3): 741–766. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.1932.tb01095.x.
• Pocock, R. I. (1939). The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma – Mammalia. Volume 1, Primates and Carnivora. London: Trustees of the British Museum.
• Pocock, R. I. (1940). "Description of a new race of puma (Puma concolor), with a note on an abnormal tooth growth in the genus". The Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 11. VI: 307–313. doi:10.1080/03745481.1940.9723683.
• Pocock, R. I. (1941). The Fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma – Mammalia. Volume 2, Carnivora: Aeluroidea, Arctoidea. London: Trustees of the British Museum.
• Pocock, R. I. (1951). Catalogue of the Genus Felis. London: Trustees of the British Museum.

References

1. Hindle, Edward (1948). "Reginald Innes Pocock. 1863-1947". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 6 (17): 189–211. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1948.0025. JSTOR 768917. S2CID 161865216.
2. Schwarz, Ernest (1948). "Reginald Innes Pocock, F. R. S". Journal of Mammalogy. 29 (1): 93. doi:10.2307/1375287. JSTOR 1375287.
3. Sierwald, Petra; Bond, Jason E. (1 January 2007). "Current Status of the Myriapod Class Diplopoda (Millipedes): Taxonomic Diversity and Phylogeny". Annual Review of Entomology. 52 (1): 401–420. doi:10.1146/annurev.ento.52.111805.090210. PMID 17163800.
4. Jan Ove Rein (2012). "Bothriuridae Simon, 1880". The Scorpion Files. Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
5. "The Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol-iv". 1768.

External links

• Works by or about Reginald Innes Pocock at the Internet Archive
• Works by Reginald Innes Pocock, at the Biodiversity Heritage Library