Robert Swinhoe

Naturalist and consular official, born in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), E India. He went to Hong Kong in 1854, and was posted to Amoy in 1855. He was on the naval expedition that captured Beijing, negotiated the Treaty of Tiensin (1860), and became British consul in Formosa (1861–6), Amoy (1866–9), and Ningpo (1871–5). He compiled the first checklist of Chinese birds (1871). Swinhoe's pheasant, Swinhoe's petrel, and Swinhoe's snipe are all named after him.

Robert Swinhoe (September 1, 1836 - October 28, 1877) was an English naturalist.

Swinhoe was born in Calcutta, India. There is no clear record of the date of his arrival in England, but it is known he attended the University of London, and in 1854 joined the China consular corps. While at this port he mastered not only the Chinese language (both official Mandarin but as well the local Hokkien dialect) but he also initiated a detailed and authoritative understanding of the ornithology of eastern China. Subsequently he served as consul at Amoy, Ningpo, and Chefoo, all on the mainland of China. He at various times during his career served as 'roving consul' for the British plenipotentiary in China for Great Britain, Rutherford Alcock. His duties in this capacity required an exploring visit to the second of China's great islands, Hainan, and as well a journey up the Yangtze River to Chungking, in Szechuan Province, to help determine steamship navigability of that river. He spent his spare time in China collecting natural history specimens, and as the area had not previously been open to westerners many of the items he collected were new to science. As he was primarily an ornithologist many of his new discoveries were birds, but he also found new fish, mammals and insects.

At a young age he had been interested in birds and had made a small collection of British birds, nests and eggs. Swinhoe took to the ideas of Darwin and in 1872 he named a species (now a subspecies) after Darwin (Pucrasia macrolopha darwini).

During his travels he studied the birds and mammals apart from studying the local culture.

His primary interest was however in birds and on these he corresponded extensively with Edward Blyth. He was forced by his ill health to leave China in October 1875. Wallace wrote due to Mr. Swinhoe's own exertions...there is probably no part of the world (if we except Europe, North America, and British India) of whose warm-blooded vertebrates we possess fuller or more accurate knowledge than we do of the coast districts of China and its islands.

His collection of 3700 specimens was bought by Henry Seebohm and this was subsequently bequeathed to the Liverpool Museum. A number of species were named after Swinhoe, including Swinhoe's Storm-petrel, which he first described himself in 1867. His brother Colonel Charles Swinhoe was a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society in India.