Hugh Alexander Macpherson was a Victorian clergyman whose name still resonates among the naturalists of Cumbria today. He lived in this county for less than two decades and yet in that time he wrote and published prolifically on the natural history of the area, culminating in his magnum opus: ‘A Vertebrate Fauna of Lakeland ’
Macpherson’s legacy can be seen not only in his published work, which remains of interest and relevance to naturalists today, but also in the continuing work of the local institutions and organisations that he helped establish and inspire. His passion and zeal for natural history led him to campaign for and develop a natural history museum at Tullie House in Carlisle . He also fostered and became the first President of Carlisle Natural History Society. In addition, his ground-breaking work on the natural history of Lakeland was the inspiration behind one of the earliest local biological records centres, established at Carlisle Museum in 1902.
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Hugh Alexander Macpherson
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Acknowledgements
We are very pleased to acknowledge the support of Cumbria County Council and English Nature in the development of this site.
The information is drawn from the Cumbria Biological Records Database at Tullie House Museum using the RECORDER 3.3 software developed by JNCC. Species distribution maps have been produced using the DMAP programme developed by Dr. Alan Morton.
Thanks also to the people who have allowed us to use their photographs on the site: Ian Armstrong, Nick Franklin, David Hickson, Duncan Lawie, Barry Marrs, Tristan Reid and Keith Temple. We would be pleased to hear from anyone with good digital photos of wildlife that we could use to improve the site.
Very many individuals and organisations have freely contributed information to the Cumbria Biological Records Database at Tullie House Museum. We have attempted to acknowledge all sources of records for each of the wildlife groups covered in the species pages of this site.The parish pages contain much additional information from sources too numerous to mention individually. There are however some major contributors of data who deserve particular mention. These are the Aquatic Beetles Recording Scheme, Biological Records Centre, Butterfly Conservation, Cumberland Bat Group, Cumbria Bird Club, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Dipterists Forum, English Nature, Environment Agency, Red Alert North West, Westmorland & Furness Bat Group and of course the network of local natural history societies active across the county.
A number of individual naturalists in the county have personally provided very significant numbers of records. The following people have each contributed over 5,000 records: Dr. N.L. Birkett, Dr. B. Colville, E.F. Hancock, S.M. Hewitt, D.W. Kydd, G.R. Naylor, R. Petely-Jones, R.W.J. Read. Thanks also to the various County Recorders who collate and contribute records to the database: David Atty & John Read (beetles), David Clarke (dragonflies) Barry Colville (slugs and snails), Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness Bat Groups (bats), Cumbria Bird Club (birds), Geoff Naylor (butterflies), Rob Petley-Jones (moths) and Neil Robinson (ants, bees and wasps). Tullie House also collates records of mammals and various invertebrate groups directly.
Finally, special thanks are due to the members of Carlisle Natural History Society who have given their time to enter records onto the database over the last 15 years or so and to other volunteers who have been of enormous help in extracting information from the collections in the Museum. They are, Geoff Naylor, Edna Marper, Dorothy Iveson, John Read, Tony Tipling, John Martin, Tom Dias, Will Higgs, Peter Harris and Tony Rigby.
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