Benjamin Preston Clark (October 8, 1860, in

West Roxbury West Roxbury is a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts bordered by Roslindale and Jamaica Plain to the northeast, the town of Brookline to the north, the cities and towns of Newton and Needham to the northwest and the town of Dedham to t ...

– January 11, 1939, in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

), known to friends as "Preston", was an American

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

who specialized in Lepidoptera, especially

Sphingidae The Sphingidae are a family of moths ( Lepidoptera) called sphinx moths, also colloquially known as hawk moths, with many of their caterpillars known as “hornworms”; it includes about 1,450 species. It is best represented in the tropics, ...

. He also operated a mercantile business and patented a new form of

twine Twine is a strong thread, light string or cord composed of two or more thinner strands twisted, and then twisted together (plied). The strands are plied in the opposite direction to that of their twist, which adds torsional strength to the cor ...

for binding grain.

Biography

Early life and education

Clark was the direct descendant of Captain Joseph Weld (1599–1646), a progenitor of the wealthy Weld family of Boston. He grew up on the Weld Farm, a plot of 278 acres (1.13 km²) in

Roxbury Roxbury may refer to: Places ;Canada * Roxbury, Nova Scotia * Roxbury, Prince Edward Island ;United States * Roxbury, Connecticut * Roxbury, Kansas * Roxbury, Maine * Roxbury, Boston, a municipality that was later integrated into the city of Bosto ...

that was granted to his ancestor by the colonial legislature for "bravery fighting the Indians" during the

Pequot War The Pequot War was an armed conflict that took place between 1636 and 1638 in New England between the Pequot tribe and an alliance of the colonists from the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and their allies from the Narragan ...

in 1637. He attended Amherst College from 1877 to 1881, where he developed a passion for the natural sciences. However, the failure of his father's mercantile firm (B. C. Clark & Co.) in 1881 forced him to set aside his plans of a career in academia, and to enter the business world. On 21 January 1890 he married Josephine Frances Allen, who was also a herbarium specimen collector.

Entomology

Clark wrote in 1922 that his interest in Sphingidae began in childhood: "...as a boy I used to see poised with whirring wings over the phlox garden at Weld Farm, and which always had for me a peculiar fascination." His large collection of more than 7,200 specimens was acquired through international correspondence with more than 500 collectors. It included representatives of more than 1300 species. The collection, which included the

type specimens In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes th ...

of 232 species described by Clark, was donated in its entirety to the

Carnegie Museum of Natural History The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as CMNH) is a natural history museum in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was founded by Pittsburgh-based industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1896. Housing some 22 million ...

after his death.

Additional Sources

*Rahn, R. A. (1997). " lark, B. P.. ''News Lep. Soc.'' 39 (4): 73, 89. *Rehn, J. A. G. (1939). " lark, B. P.. ''Ent. News'' 50: 90. *Sachtleben, H. (1939). " lark, B. P.. ''Arb. morph. taxon. Ent. Berlin-Dahlem'' 6: 209.

References

American lepidopterists 1860 births 1939 deaths People from West Roxbury, Boston 19th-century American zoologists 20th-century American zoologists {{US-entomologist-stub