Percy Tarlton Rayment FRZS (27 November 1882 – 17 June 1964) was an Australian

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

author In legal discourse, an author is the creator of an original work that has been published, whether that work exists in written, graphic, visual, or recorded form. The act of creating such a work is referred to as authorship. Therefore, a sculpt ...

, broadcaster,

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

entomologist Entomology (from Ancient Greek ἔντομον (''éntomon''), meaning "insect", and -logy from λόγος (''lógos''), meaning "study") is the branch of zoology that focuses on insects. Those who study entomology are known as entomologists. In ...

and

beekeeper A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees, a profession known as beekeeping. The term beekeeper refers to a person who keeps honey bees in beehives, boxes, or other receptacles. The beekeeper does not control the creatures. The beekeeper ow ...

. He is especially renowned for his extensive pioneering studies of Australia’s native

bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamil ...

s. Apart from numerous papers and articles in the entomological literature and in natural history journals and popular magazines including '' Walkabout'', books authored by Rayment include: * 1916 -
Money in Bees in Australasia
'. Whitcombe & Tombs: Melbourne. (Handbook to beekeeping). * 1933 - ''The Prince of the Totem''. Robertson & Mullens: Melbourne. (Collection of Aboriginal tales and legends for children). * 1935 - ''A Cluster of Bees''. Endeavour Press: Sydney. (Major monograph comprising 60 essays on Australian bees). * 1937 - ''The Valley of the Sky''. Ivor Nicholson & Watson: London. (Novel). * 1945 - ''Eagles and Earthlings. A metrical tribute to the air crews in the war''. Author. (Poetry). * 1946 - ''Profitable Honey Plants of Australasia''. Whitcombe & Tombs: Melbourne. (Handbook to beekeeping). * 1953 - ''Bees of the Portland District''. Portland Field Naturalists Club. Although Rayment is currently best remembered as a person who wrote expertly about

beekeeping in Australia Beekeeping in Australia is a commercial industry with around 25,000 registered beekeepers owning over 670,000 beehive, hives in 2018. Most are found in the eastern states of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria (Australia), Victoria and Tasmani ...

, he spent a considerable amount of time with the Aruntja people of

Central Australia Central Australia, also sometimes referred to as the Red Centre, is an inexactly defined region associated with the geographic centre of Australia. In its narrowest sense it describes a region that is limited to the town of Alice Springs and ...

. He had no formal training as an anthropologist, but his wide-ranging intelligence was a good alternative to such training. He was sufficiently accepted by the Aruntja people that, although a white-man, he was regarded as an honorary member of their tribe. In ''The Prince of the Totem'', Rayment himself drew the striking black-and-white illustrations that vividly depict the characters, and events.

References

External links

Rayment, Percy Tarlton (1882–1964) Australian Dictionary of Biography adb.anu.edu.au
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rayment, Tarlton Australian entomologists Australian non-fiction writers Australian beekeepers 1882 births 1964 deaths 20th-century Australian poets Australian male poets 20th-century Australian male writers Beekeeping in Australia 20th-century Australian zoologists 20th-century Australian naturalists Australian male non-fiction writers