Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Haworth, Adrian Hardy
HAWORTH, ADRIAN HARDY (1767–1833), entomologist and botanist, a member of an old mercantile family, was born at Hull in 1767. He was articled to a solicitor, but renounced the legal profession on completion of his articles and settled at Cottingham, near Hull, where he began the study of entomology, ornithology, and botany. He moved to Little Chelsea between 1793 and 1797, where he resided until 1812, returned to Cottingham in the latter year, and once more moved to Chelsea in 1817. He became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1798, founded the Aurelian Society, which never reached twenty members, about 1802, and on its dissolution in 1806 took the lead in establishing the Entomological Society of London, which was afterwards merged in the Zoological Club of the Linnean Society. Besides forming a collection of eleven hundred species and three hundred varieties of lepidopterous insects at Chelsea, he cultivated a great variety of succulent plants, which he obtained from Kew, and during his second residence at Cottingham he helped to form and to arrange the Hull botanical garden. He died suddenly of cholera at Salamanca Place, Queen's Elm, Chelsea, 24 Aug. 1833. He was three times married, and he had children by each marriage. His third wife survived him. His collections were sold by auction, the insects, numbering forty thousand, being catalogued by J. O. Westwood, now professor of zoology at Oxford. The type specimens of insects described by him are now in the British Museum, and his herbarium, which comprised twenty thousand specimens, is incorporated with that of H. B. Fielding at Oxford. There is a lithographic portrait of Haworth by Weld Taylor, and the genus Haworthia, a subdivision of Aloë, has been dedicated to him by Duval.
Haworth's works are: 1. ‘Botanical History of Rhus Toxicodendron’ (anon.), in the medical essay on that plant (1793), by his fellow-townsman, Dr. Alderson. 2. ‘Observations on the genus Mesembryanthemum,’ 1794. 3. ‘Prodromus Lepidopterorum Britannicorum: a concise Catalogue … with times and places of appearance, by a Fellow of the Linnean Society,’ 1802, enumerating 793 species. 4. The sixth volume of Andrews's ‘Botanist's Repository,’ which was the work of Haworth (1803). 5. ‘Lepidoptera Britannica,’ 8vo, pt. i. 1803; pt. ii. 1810 (?); and pt. iii. 1812. In 1829 a so-called appendix of 204 pages was published, containing six ‘Dissertationes variæ’ or ‘Miscellanea naturalia,’ all of which are botanical, referring mostly to succulent plants. 6. ‘Synopsis Plantarum Succulentarum,’ London, 1812, 8vo; Haworth's chief botanical work, arranged on the Linnæan system and giving in Latin the description, habitat, date of introduction, and month of flowering of each species; a supplement was issued in 1819, accompanied by ‘Narcissorum Revisio.’ 7. ‘Saxifragearum Enumeratio,’ 1821 (?), 8vo (the preface is dated 1817); to this is appended ‘Revisiones Plantarum Succulentarum,’ pp. 207.
The ‘Transactions of the Entomological Society’ begin in 1807 with a ‘Review of the Rise and Progress of … Entomology in Great Britain’ by him, and the two other parts, viz. those of 1809 and 1812, contain many of his descriptive papers. Between 1823 and 1828 twenty-five papers by Haworth appeared in the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ and he also contributed to the ‘Transactions’ of the Linnean and Horticultural societies. Between 1812 and 1819 Haworth wrote a poem in twenty-four cantos, entitled ‘Cottingham,’ part only of which was published in a local newspaper, and that part not evincing much poetic power. Though he never travelled beyond his own country, Haworth was a sound naturalist on all subjects, and his contributions to science are of lasting value.
[Faulkner's Chelsea, ii. 11; Gent. Mag. 1833, ii. 377; Cottage Gardener, vi. 157; Britten and Boulger's Index of Botanists, Journal of Botany, 1889, p. 81.]