Francis Buchanan White
Encyclopedia
Francis Buchanan White was a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 entomologist and botanist.

He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh
University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

. After doing a Grand Tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...

 in 1866, he settled in Perth where he would remain his entire life. His main area of interest was the Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera
Lepidoptera is a large order of insects that includes moths and butterflies . It is one of the most widespread and widely recognizable insect orders in the world, encompassing moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies, skipper butterflies, and moth-butterflies...

 and the taxonomy of the Hemiptera
Hemiptera
Hemiptera is an order of insects most often known as the true bugs , comprising around 50,000–80,000 species of cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, shield bugs, and others...

. He was the author of numerous scientific papers, published in the Scottish Naturalist, Journal of Botany, and The Proceedings and Transactions of the Perthshire
Perthshire
Perthshire, officially the County of Perth , is a registration county in central Scotland. It extends from Strathmore in the east, to the Pass of Drumochter in the north, Rannoch Moor and Ben Lui in the west, and Aberfoyle in the south...

 Society of Natural Science
. White was a Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and the Linnean Society.

In 1883,Buchanan White redescribed the known species of the Hemiptera
Hemiptera
Hemiptera is an order of insects most often known as the true bugs , comprising around 50,000–80,000 species of cicadas, aphids, planthoppers, leafhoppers, shield bugs, and others...

 genus Halobates
Halobates
Halobates or sea skaters are a genus with over 40 species of water striders. While many are coastal, about five of these are able to survive and stand on the surface of the open ocean, a habitat containing very few insect species. They are predators, coastal species feeding mainly on fallen...

and he illustrated 11 species in colour, with numerous drawings in black and white of structural details.This was one of the parts of the Challenger Report
Challenger expedition
The Challenger expedition of 1872–76 was a scientific exercise that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography. The expedition was named after the mother vessel, HMS Challenger....

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