Thomas Velley (15 May 1748 – 8 June 1806) was an English botanist.

Life

Born at

Chipping Ongar Chipping Ongar () is a market town and former civil parish, now in the parish of Ongar, in the Epping Forest District of the county of Essex, England. It is located east of Epping, southeast of Harlow and northwest of Brentwood. In 2020 ...

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

, on 15 May 1748, he was son of the Rev. Thomas Velley of the town.FamilySearch. England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975. He matriculated from St. John's College, Oxford, on 19 March 1766, and graduated

B.C.L. Bachelor of Civil Law (abbreviated BCL or B.C.L.; ) is the name of various degrees in law conferred by English-language universities. The BCL originated as a postgraduate degree in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge; at Oxford, the BCL contin ...

in 1772. He became lieutenant-colonel of the Oxford militia, and was made D.C.L. of the university in 1787. He resided for many years at Bath, and devoted himself to botany, and especially to the study of algæ, collecting chiefly along the south coast. He was the friend and correspondent of Sir James Edward Smith,

Dawson Turner Dawson Turner (18 October 1775 – 21 June 1858) was an English banker, botanist and antiquary. He specialized in the botany of cryptogams and was the father-in-law of the botanist William Jackson Hooker and of the historian Francis Palgr ...

, John Stackhouse, Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, Sir William Watson the younger, and Richard Relhan, and became a fellow of the

Linnean Society The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature collec ...

in 1792. Jumping from a runaway stage-coach at Reading on 6 June 1806, Velley fell and suffered

concussion A concussion, also known as a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), is a head injury that temporarily affects brain functioning. Symptoms may include headache, dizziness, difficulty with thinking and concentration, sleep disturbances, a brief ...

, from which he died on 8 June.

Legacy

Sir James Edward Smith in 1798 gave the name ''

Velleia ''Velleia'' is a historically recognised genus of about 30 species of herbs in the family Goodeniaceae. The genus was first described in 1798 by James Edward Smith in ''Transactions of the Linnean Society of London''. The genus was named after ...

'', in his honour, to an Australasian genus of flowering plants. Velley's annotated herbarium, illustrated by dissections and microscopic drawings of grasses and other flowering plants, and especially of

algæ Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular microalgae, suc ...

, in eight folio volumes, was purchased from his widow by

William Roscoe William Roscoe (8 March 175330 June 1831) was an English banker, lawyer, and briefly a Member of Parliament. He is best known as one of England's first abolitionists, and as the author of the poem for children '' The Butterfly's Ball, and th ...

for the

Liverpool Botanical Garden Wavertree Botanic Garden and Park is a mid-19th century public park in Liverpool, England. Originally constructed as a private botanic garden, it was taken over by Liverpool Corporation in 1846 and expanded into a public park. The park is Grade ...

. The herbarium is now held at

Liverpool World Museum World Museum is a large museum in Liverpool, England which has extensive collections covering archaeology, ethnology and the natural and physical sciences. Special attractions include the Natural History Centre and a planetarium. Entry to the ...

Works

Velley's only independent work was ''Coloured Figures of Marine Plants found on the Southern Coast of England, illustrated with Descriptions'', Bath, 1795, pp. 38, with five coloured plates. He was credited with four papers in the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

's ''Catalogue'' (vi. 131), but the last was the work of Smith.

References

Attribution

{{DEFAULTSORT:Velley, Thomas 1748 births 1806 deaths 18th-century British botanists People from Chipping Ongar Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Accidental deaths from falls Accidental deaths in England Fellows of the Linnean Society of London 19th-century British botanists