1840, besides one on ‘The History and Natural Arrangement of Insects’ (1840), written in conjunction with William Edward Shuckard [q. v.] In preparation for this series of works he visited the museums of Paris in 1828 under the guidance of Cuvier and St.-Hilaire, and, to be within reach of London, settled at Tittenhanger Green, near St. Albans. From the first he adopted a quinary system based on the circular system of William Sharp Macleay [q. v.], and several volumes in the ‘Cabinet Cyclopædia’ series are devoted to elaborate expositions of these extremely artificial but professedly natural systems of classification in various groups of animals. Besides writing that portion of Sir John Richardson's ‘Fauna Boreali-Americana’ that relates to birds, with introductory ‘Observations on the Natural System’ printed separately, and furnishing the article on the geographical distribution of man and animals in Hugh Murray's ‘Encyclopædia of Geography,’ Swainson contributed three volumes to Sir William Jardine's ‘Naturalist's Library,’ one dealing with the flycatchers (vol. xvii. 1835), and the others with the birds of Western Africa (vols. xxii. xxiii. 1837). In 1837, having suffered pecuniary losses, he emigrated to New Zealand. On the voyage out he lost a large portion of his collections; but he took advantage of touching at Rio to take various plants to his new home to naturalise. In 1853 he was engaged by the governments of Van Diemen's Land and Victoria to report on the timber trees of those colonies. Swainson died at his residence, Fern Grove, Hutt Valley, New Zealand, 7 Dec. 1855.
Swainson was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1816 and of the Royal Society, on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks, in 1820, and he was also a member of many foreign academies. By his first wife, a daughter of John Parkes of Warwick, whom he married in 1825, he had five children, of whom four sons survived him, and by his second wife, who also survived him, he had three daughters. An engraved portrait of him by Edward Francis Finden, from a drawing by Mosses, forms the frontispiece to his volume on ‘Taxidermy’ in the ‘Cabinet Cyclopædia.’ His collection of Greek plants is in the herbarium of the Liverpool botanical garden.
As a zoological draughtsman Swainson combined accuracy with artistic skill, and his papers in the ‘Memoirs of the Wernerian Society,’ Tilloch's ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ the ‘Journal of the Royal Institution,’ Loudon's ‘Magazine of Natural History,’ the ‘Magazine of Zoology and Botany,’ the ‘Entomological Magazine,’ and the ‘Papers of the Royal Society of Van Diemen's Land,’ of which thirty-six, dealing with ornithology, conchology, entomology and trees, are enumerated in the Royal Society's ‘Catalogue’ (viii. 893), contain descriptions of many species new to science.
Besides the works already mentioned, Swainson was the author of:
- ‘Ornithological Drawings,’ series 1, ‘Birds of Brazil,’ 5 parts, 1834–5, 8vo.
- ‘Exotic Conchology,’ 6 parts, 1834–5, 4to.
- ‘Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural History,’ 1834, 8vo.
- ‘Elements of Conchology,’ 1835, 12mo.
- ‘Treatise on the Geography and Classifications of Animals,’ 1835, 8vo.
- ‘Treatise on the Natural History and Classification of Quadrupeds,’ 1835, 8vo.
- . … ‘of Birds,’ 2 vols. 1836.
- … ‘of Fishes, Amphibians, and Reptiles,’ 2 vols. 1838.
- ‘Animals in Menageries,’ 1838, 8vo.
- ‘The Habits and Instincts of Animals,’ 1840, 8vo.
- ‘Taxidermy, with the Biography of Zoologists and notices of their works,’ 1840, 8vo.
- ‘A Treatise on Malacology,’ 1840, 8vo.
A work on New Zealand is sometimes assigned to the naturalist in error. It is by his namesake, who is noticed below.
[Autobiography in Taxidermy, 1840; Gent. Mag. 1856, i. 532–3; Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 1855–6, p. xlix.]
SWAINSON, WILLIAM (1809–1883), first attorney-general of New Zealand, born in Lancaster on 25 April 1809, was the eldest son of William Swainson, merchant. He was educated at Lancaster grammar school, and, entering at the Inner Temple in 1835, was called to the bar in June 1838. He practised as a conveyancer, and rarely attended the Lancaster sessions.
In 1841 Swainson was appointed attorney-general of New Zealand, partly on the recommendation of his friend (Sir) William Martin (1807–1880) [q. v.], who had just become chief justice. During the voyage out he assisted Martin to draft the measures required to set the new legal machinery in motion. He brought out with him the framework of the house in which he took up his residence at Taurarua, Judge's Bay. The legislation which he carried through the council between December 1841 and April 1842 was comprehensive, lucid, and compact. In 1842 he advised the governor, Willoughby Shortland [q. v.], that in his opinion the jurisdiction of the British crown did not ipso facto extend to the Maoris. This opinion drew a severe rebuke from Earl Grey.
In 1854, on the introduction of an elective
