1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Milne-Edwards, Henry

MILNE-EDWARDS, HENRY (1800–1885), French zoologist, the son of an Englishman, was born in Bruges on the 23rd of October 1800, but spent most of his life in France. At first he turned his attention to medicine, in which he graduated at Paris in 1823; but his passion for natural history soon prevailed, and he gave himself up to the study of the lower forms of animal life. One of his earliest papers (Recherches anatomiques sur les crustacés), which was presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1829, formed the theme of an elaborate and eulogistic report by G. Cuvier in the following year. It embodied the results of two dredging expeditions undertaken by him and his friend J. V. Audouin during 1826 and 1828 in the neighbourhood of Granville, and was remarkable for clearly distinguishing the marine fauna of that portion of the French coast into four zones. Much of his original work was published in the Annales des sciences naturelles, with the editorship of which he was associated from 1834. Of his books may be mentioned the Histoire naturelle de crustacés (3 vols., 1837–1841), which long remained a standard work; Histoire naturelle des coralliaires, published in 1858–1860, but begun many years before; Leçons sur la physiologie et l’anatomie comparée de l’homme et des animaux (1857–1881), in 14 volumes; and a little work on the elements of zoology, originally published in 1834, but subsequently remodelled, which enjoyed an enormous circulation. He was appointed in 1841 professor of entomology at the muséum d’histoire naturelle, where twenty-one years later he succeeded Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in the chair of zoology. The Royal Society in 1856 awarded him the Copley medal in recognition of his zoological investigations. He died in Paris on the 29th of July 1885. His son, Alphonse Milne-Edwards (1835–1900), who became professor of ornithology at the museum in 1876, devoted himself especially to fossil birds and deep-sea exploration.