Fonscolombe, Etienne Laurent Joseph Hippolyte Boyer de (1772-1853)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
An account is given of existing material of Hymenoptera collected by Boyer de Fonscolombe and located in Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, in the University Museum, Oxford, and in Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, Geneva. It includes designations of 15 lectotypes and 16 neotypes, also 17 new synonyms and 6 new combinations. Much new Hymenoptera material, including about 550 species of Chalcidoidea, has been collected by the author on the Fonscolombe estate. An outline description of the features of the estate and its fauna and flora, is included, together with biographical notes on Boyer de Fonscolombe and remarks about the localities where he collected.

Etienne Laurent Joseph Hippolyte Boyer de Fonscolombe (22 July 1772, Aix - 13 February 1853, Aix) was a French entomologist who specialised in Coleoptera and Hymenoptera and pest insects.

Etienne was the son of Emmanuel Honoré Hippolyte de Boyer ( 1744, Aix, Saint-Sauveur-1810) Aix, Saint-Sauveur)an aristocrat who studied agronomy writing on this subject in the Mémoires de l'académie d'Aix.He was educated at the Collège de Juilly.Before finishing his education in 1789, "he had attended meetings of the Constituent Assembly in Versailles, with Mirabeau.He was later "Locked up as suspect" (1793-94).These were dangerous times his father was also imprisoned in the Terror.On his release and marriage he lived with his parents and his mother-in-law at the castle of Montvert with his mother-in-law. With the death of his father (1810), he rented a floor of the hotel of Aix and the couple lived with his mother who found him "Entomologiste très remarquable avec l’intelligence, la bonté, la vertu et le savoir" (a remarkable entomologist with intelligence, kindness, virtue and knowledge). Hippolyte and his brother Marcellin de Fonscolombe, never ceased occupying themselves with the natural sciences "like those of antiquity and on medals". From 1833 Etienne entrusted the management of the Fonscolombe estates to his son-in-law, Adolphe de Saporta and 1848 he sold Montvert when it was left to his wife.He was then able to devote himself entirely to entomology.Following his father he published most of his work in Mémoires de l'académie d'Aix

Much of Fonscolombe's collection is in the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris and there are some Apoidea in the Hope Department of Entomology in Oxford.

PUBLICATIONS

 * Fonscolombe, B. de. 1846. Notes sur huit espèces nouvelles d'Hyménoptères et de Neuroptères, trouvées aux environs d'Aix. Ann. Soc. Entomol. Fr. (2)(4): 39-51

REFERENCE

 * Graham, M.W.R. de Vere. Journal of Natural History 26: 1089-1111, portrait.