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William Ogilby (1805 – 1 September 1873) was an Irish-born zoologist who was at the forefront of classification and naming of animal species in the 1830s and served as Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1839 to 1847. He removed to Ireland during the Great Famine and later built the grand but architecturally dismal Altinaghree Castle near Donemana, County Tyrone. Mount Ogilby in Queensland was named for him in 1846.
Illegitimate births were commonplace among the Ogilbys in the early nineteenth century, and William seems to have been recognised as his father's heir from an early age. He was educated at a small academy kept by a clergyman in MacclesfieldWill of Leslie Ogilby. before proceeding to Belfast Academical Institution and thence to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1824. He graduated in 1828J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part II, Vol. IV (Cambridge University Press, 1951), p. 582. and was called to the Bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1832. Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, Parishes of County Londonderry IV, 1824, 1833–5, Roe Valley Upper: Dungiven, Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University of Belfast, 1991, p. 54.
His examination performance at Cambridge was unimpressive, perhaps indicating he neglected the necessary preparatory work in favour of studying natural history and science. His interest in the natural world was of early origin and may have been kindled by relatives. His uncle Alexander Ogilby (c1756-1846) of Kilcatten House, Claudy, had a "curious and valuable collection of fossils" in his "choice little museum"; his maiden aunt Elizabeth Ogilby of Limavady "saved from the ravages of the lapidiary" a natural crystal which, weighing 70lbs, was in 1814 believed to be the largest in Ireland;Rev. George Vaughan Sampson, A Memoir Explanatory of the Chart and Survey of the County of Londonderry, Ireland, London, 1814, p. 81; William Shaw Mason, A Statistical Account or Parochial Survey of Ireland, drawn up from the Communications of the Clergy, Vol. I (1814), p. 292. and his older cousin, Leslie Ogilby, was an "accomplished naturalist and botanist" who successfully cultivated Ireland's rarer native plants and whose bequest of 400 books on scientific topics was an important addition to the Royal Dublin Society's library.Charles Farran, "Panegyric on Mr M’Alla and other Irish Botanists", in , Vol. II, John Van Voorst, London, 1845, pp. 742–746 (for Leslie Ogilby's "Notes on a Botanical Ramble in Connemara and Arean", see pp. 345–351); Saunders's Newsletter, 8 February 1853.
Ogilby's arrival in London gave him access to the works of Continental naturalists and to specimens of animals and birds held by the British Museum, the Zoological and Linnean Society Societies, and the East India Company. He later became a regular visitor to the museums at Leiden and Paris, and he observed animal locomotion and behaviour at the Zoological Society's Regent's Park menagerie, the Surrey Zoological Gardens at Newington, the Menagerie du Jardin des plantes at Paris, and in private collections such as that of Lord Derby. He visited Germany (notably Berlin and Frankfurt) on several occasions and the Cape Colony more than once. Proceedings of the Zoological Society, Part VI, 1838, p. 63; Part VIII, 1840, p. 35; Part XI, 1843, p. 10; Annals of Natural History, or Magazine of Zoology, Botany and Geology, Vol. I, R. & J. E. Taylor, London, 1838, p. 429; The Natural History of Monkeys, Opossums and Lemurs, Charles Knight, London, 1838, pp. 120, 169, 289, 315, 342, 368, 378, 396, 412–415; Liverpool Record Office – Papers of Edward Smith Stanley, Earl of Derby: Letterbooks 1839–43, File 3, f.183 Letter of 27 March 1843, Ogilby to Lord Derby.
The breadth of his knowledge of literary sources from which useful natural history material could be quarried was evident when he alerted Professor Thomas Bell to an editorial note in Jonathan Swift's Considerations about Maintaining the Poor referring to the importation of frogs to Dublin from England at the beginning of the eighteenth century.See Thomas Bell, FRS, History of British Reptiles, John Van Voorst, London, 1839, at p. 86.
He chaired meetings of the Zoological Society from 1836 Proceedings of the Zoological Society, Part IV, 1836, p. 54. and by 1838 was not only one of its Fellows but also a Fellow of the Linnean, Geological and Royal Astronomical Societies. Annals of Natural History, Vol. I, p. 216; Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. 45 (1889), Proceedings, p. 46; Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. V, Priestley & Weale, London, 1833, p. 428. He was on terms of friendship with Charles Darwin, the Secretary of the Geographical Society, and in 1839 both men were elected to the Council of the Zoological Society, Morning Chronicle, 30 April 1839. Ogilby becoming that Society's Secretary shortly afterwards. Morning Chronicle, 5 July 1839. In this latter capacity he conducted the Society's correspondence, controlled and catalogued its museum, recorded the animals in its zoological gardens and made recommendations for their purchase.Christine Brandon-Jones, "Edward Blyth, Charles Darwin and the Animal Trade in Nineteenth Century India and Britain", Journal of the History of Biology, No. 30, 1997, p. 161.
After his appointment as Secretary his contribution of scholarly papers and commentaries to Zoological Society meetings declined. He last named a species ( Cercopithecus tantalus – the Tantalus monkey) in April 1841, and his final classification submission was made in January 1843. Proceedings of the Zoological Society, Part IX, 1841, p. 33; Part XI, 1843, p. 11. He continued as Secretary of the Society until resigning in 1847. He had been unremunerated in the post and was succeeded by a salaried official.Sofia Akerberg, Knowledge and Pleasure at Regent's Park: the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London during the Nineteenth Century, Department of Historical Studies, Umea University, Sweden, 2001, p. 125.
In 1846 Sir Thomas Mitchell, after whom Ogilby had named Dipus mitchellii (Mitchell's hopping mouse) in 1838, reciprocated by the naming of Mount Ogilby in the Maranoa River region of Queensland, numbering Ogilby among "the individuals of our own race most distinguished or zealous in the advancement of science and the pursuit of human knowledge... sufficiently well-known in the world to preclude all necessity for further explanation why their names were applied to a part of the world's geography".Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, Surveyor-General of New South Wales, Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia in Search of a Route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria, 1848, Chapter V, entry for 18 June 1846.[2]
Ogilby's study convinced him that the presence and architecture of hands were key indicators of relationship patterns among certain mammals, and he proposed recognition of a separate mammiferous order to be called cheiropoda (possessing hands) made up of bimana (comprising only man), quadrumana and pedimana (comprising, respectively, monkeys of the Old World and monkeys of the New World). He presented the proposal to the Zoological Society on 8 March 1836 in his paper "Observations on the opposable Power of the Thumb in certain Mammals"."Observations on the Opposable Power of the Thumb in certain Mammals, considered as a zoological character, and on the Natural Affinities which subsist between the Bimana, Quadrumana, and Pedimana", read as a paper to the Zoological Society of London on 8 March 1836 (abstract in the Society's Proceedings, Part IV, 1836, pp. 25–28, and in The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Third Series, Vol. 9, Richard Taylor, 1836, pp. 302–306) and reproduced verbatim in the Magazine of Natural History, Vol. I (new series), London, 1837, pp. 449–459 and 517–525. This was printed in the Magazine of Natural History in the following year and acclaimed by the systematist Hugh Strickland to be "one of the most valuable and important memoirs ever communicated to this magazine". Magazine of Natural History, new series Vol. II (1838), p. 204.
Ogilby took the classification cheiropoda into actual use and it was recognised and explained, probably by him, in Charles Knight's The Penny Cyclopaedia of 1837. The Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Charles Knight, London, Vol. VII (1837), pp. 17–18. In 1838 he enshrined its basis in his 442-page book, The Natural History of Monkeys, Opossums, and Lemurs, published by Knight for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge as part of the popular series The Menageries.Anon. Ogilby, The Natural History of Monkeys, Opossums and Lemurs, Charles Knight & Co., London, 1838. As was the case with other volumes in the series, it appeared anonymously and, although Ogilby referred to himself as the author and was credited as such in The Penny Cyclopaedia, Proceedings of the Zoological Society, Part XI, 1843, p. 11; The Penny Cyclopaedia, Vol. XIX (1841), p. 189 [3]; Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. X, Part II (1841), p. 838. his anonymity has resulted in misattribution. Anonymity on other occasions may conceal a substantial body of work by Ogilby.
Despite some initial support for an order of mammals defined by possession of hands, Ogilby's proposal soon attracted objection – quickened in part, no doubt, by aversion to the proximate relationship between man and ape which it implied. He had anticipated opposition, observing that whereas "the metaphysician or the divine may consider man apart from the animal kingdom, the naturalist must view him in a different light: anatomical structure and organic conformation are the only principles which the zoologist can admit as the foundations of natural science... Man is too closely connected with the apes to admit of being placed widely apart from them". The Natural History of Monkeys, p. 15.
Sympathy for Ogilby's order of cheiropoda waned. By 1863 the proposal to classify mammals by reference to thumbs alone was considered eccentric and "has, as might have been expected, never been adopted".Cuthbert Collingwood, FLS, "On the Typical Quadrumana", Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 15 (1862–63), p. 148.
When praising Ogilby's "Power of the Thumb" thesis in the pages of the Magazine of Natural History, Strickland had disagreed with some of its nomenclature. Ogilby responded in immoderate language, denouncing the alternatives proposed by Strickland as arbitrary, dogmatical, unfounded and unnecessary, whereupon Westwood entered the argument in favour of Strickland. Magazine of Natural History, new series Vol. I (1837), pp. 604–605; new series Vol. II (1838), pp. 150–157, 198–204, 204–205, 326–331, 492–494, 555–556; Joeri Witteveen, "Suppressing Synonymy with a Homonym: The Emergence of the Nomenclatural Type Concept in Nineteenth Century Natural History", Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 49 (2016), pp. 135–189 at pp. 152–153. Despite this unpromising backdrop, the Science Association's working party found considerable common ground. A first draft of a regulatory code prepared by Strickland was circulated in February 1842, Darwin marking it with his comments and forwarding it to Ogilby (both men's manuscript observations survive).Gordon McOuat, Naming and Necessity: Sherborn's Context in the 19th Century, Figure 3: ZooKeys 2016 (550): pp. 57–69.
The draft was then discussed and revised in meetings attended by Ogilby in April and May, and a second draft was printed for presentation at the Association's annual assembly at Manchester in June. The very existence of the working party attracted hostility at the assembly, notably from J. E. Gray, Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum, with whom Ogilby had a history of bickering over nomenclature. As a result Strickland's draft was not adopted in Manchester but, after further revision to reflect comment by members of the working party, was included in the group's report which was printed in the Science Association's Proceedings.
These "Strickland Rules" included provision for the name of a species to be changed if, as applied to the object or group which it represented, its meaning transpired to be "false". Ogilby opposed such flexibility, believing that, once established, the name must remain constant although its application could change by convention. Words, he said, were no more than the expression of an idea and so long as there was agreement on the idea the original or literal meaning of the words encapsulating it had no importance.Rookmaaker at pp. 32–38; Gordon R. McOuat, "Species, Rules and Meaning: The Principles of Language and the Ends of Definitions in 19th Century Natural History" in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4 (1996), pp. 473–519, at 506–514.
He, alone among the first members of the working party, declined to sign the report, but the rules which it promulgated attracted immediate international interest, were reprinted in French and Italian and recommended by foreign zoological societies to be followed by their members. They were the first attempt at an international code governing language in any science, and to them every modern code, whether botanical or zoological, can trace its direct ancestry.McOuat, Naming and Necessity, p. 60.
Although he largely disappeared from the view of fellow zoologists (in 1855 Edward Blyth wrote to Darwin asking "What has become of Ogilby?"),Darwin Correspondence Project, Cambridge University Library, Letter/DCP LETT 1776.xml. his interest in natural history continued. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1849 and of the Natural History Society of Dublin in 1862. Freeman's Journal, 11 February 1849; Saunders's News-Letter, 12 April 1862. When, in 1852, the Science Association held its annual assembly in Belfast, he was President of its Zoological Section and read a paper "On the Geographical Distribution of Animals in Connexion with the Progress of Civilization". London Evening Standard, 6 September 1852. In 1857 he attended the Association's meeting in Dublin, delivering a paper of similar theme,"On the Dispersion of Particular Kinds of Domestic Animals as Compared with the Great Ethnological Diversity of Mankind", reported Morning Advertiser, 1 September 1857. and in 1862 he submitted his paper "On the Eccentricity of the Earth and the Method of finding the Coordinates of its Centre of Gravity" to the Association's meeting in Cambridge. London Evening Standard, 6 October 1862.
In 1830 he had married Matilda Doria, a daughter of Niccolo Doria, Marquese di Spineto, a Neapolitan refugee who had established himself as a teacher of Italian at Cambridge and acted as interpreter at the trial of Queen Caroline. Oxford Journal, 11 September 1830; Morning Post, 31 August 1849. In 1836 Ogilby named a particularly beautiful species of antelope ( Antilope doria) in his wife's honour. Proceedings of the Zoological Society, Part IV, 1836, p. 121; F. A. Jentink, Notes from the Leyden Museum, Vol. VII (1885), Brill Publishers, Leiden, pp. 269–272.
When he took up residence in Ireland his wife initially remained at their house in London's Hanover Terrace while suitable accommodation was built for them on the Irish estate. Following the death of her father in September 1849, she joined her husband in a rented property at Buncrana but died there a month later, aged 40. Dublin Evening Mail, 2 November 1849. There were no children of the marriage.
A little over a year later, Ogilby remarried. His second wife, Adelaide Douglas, was a daughter of the local Rector at Donagheady, a niece of the Earl of Morton and a cousin of the Marquess of Abercorn. Saint James's Chronicle, 4 February 1851. For the next twenty years Ogilby led the life of a resident Irish squire. He was commissioned a captain in the Royal Tyrone Militia in 1851, Tyrone Constitution, 16 May 1851. served as High Sheriff of County Tyrone in 1852 Belfast Mercury, 24 February 1852. and enlarged his landholdings by purchase of a further 2,900 acres near Omagh for £30,500 in 1853. Belfast Mercury, 25 February 1853. A county magistrate by 1854, he was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant in 1863. Saunders's News-Letter, 7 January 1863.
In the 1860s he considerably enlarged Liscleen Lodge, the house he had first built on his estate, transforming it to become Altnachree otherwise Altinaghree Castle. This extravagant structure, built with cut stone brought from Dungiven, resembled a castellated factory but became, albeit briefly, an attractive entertainment destination for fashionable Irish society.
For some years Ogilby and his family seemed well settled in County Tyrone. He lectured to the Omagh Literary Society, served as President of the Donagheady and Leckpatrick Farming Society, ran a successful home farm, won prizes for his short-horned cattle in National and Ulster shows, and engaged in extensive tree-planting. Tyrone Constitution, 1 June 1855; Farmer's Gazette and Journal of Practical Horticulture (Dublin), 30 July 1859; Irish Farmers’ Gazette, 10 August 1861; Londonderry Standard, 14 May 1864; Derry Journal, 21 January 1865; Roulston, pp. 188–191. His plantation of Cedrus deodara, covering 11 acres, was said to be the largest in Europe.Rev. C. A. Johns, The Forest Trees of Britain, Vol. II, 1849, The Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge, London, p. 423. However, in 1872 he discontinued farming and relocated his family to Dublin for the benefit of his children's education. Northern Whig, 7 March 1882.
In A New Theory he confirmed his belief in a divine creator of life, damning the "ignorant attempts which have been made to substitute a godless Pantheism for both natural and revealed religion; to dissociate the universe from its Creator, and resuscitate the defunct Goddess of Reason which the indignation of outraged society dethroned and buried some eighty years ago". The Examiner, 24 February 1872. He regarded the capacity for species to evolve as testament to the "work of creation being complete and perfect in all its parts", the Creator intending that all forms of life should develop as necessary to perpetuate themselves "without any resort to immaculate creations afterwards".W. Ogilby, "On the Characters and Description of a new Genus of Carnivora, called Cynictis", Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, Vol. I, 1835, p. 29. He believed that humankind, unlike the beasts that perish, had been made "the proud heir of immortality" according to the "inscrutable wisdom of creation". The Natural History of Monkeys, p. 16.
He died at his Dublin home, 12 Earlsfort Terrace, on 1 September 1873. Morning Post, 6 September 1873.
The younger son, James Douglas Ogilby (1853–1925), was a noted athlete. He was 100-yards victor (twice in 10.2 seconds) in the Irish national championships in each of the four years 1874–77, and he invariably won over that distance in competition with the English champions. He is said to have been, in his day, "the most successful amateur sprinter in the world" and also to have been unequalled in Ireland as a swimmer and diver. He originally studied ornithology but subsequently specialised in ichthyology, emigrating to Australia in 1884. Town and Country Journal (Sydney, Australia), 8 January 1887; Roll of Honour Irish Athletics Champions 1873–2014, available at Athletics Ireland; G. P. Walsh, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 11, Melbourne University Press, 1988, p. 68.
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