Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Arthur Butler (4 July 1843 – 16 April 1916) was an English ornithologist and British Army officer. He is commemorated in the scientific specific name for Hume's Owl, Strix butleri.
Butler was born at Coton House, Churchover, Warwickshire and studied at Eton. He joined the army at the age of 21, and served in Gibraltar, India and South Africa. He retired in 1884 as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Irish Rifles. His son Arthur Lennox Butler was also an ornithologist.
Butler was a keen bird collector and taxidermist. His collections were acquired by the Natural History Museum in part directly and also through the collections of Allan Octavian Hume, Lord Rothschild and others.
Famous quotes containing the words edward, arthur and/or butler:
“To tell you the truth, I’m relieved that the Van Ripers are not coming. He’s telling the same jokes he told twenty years ago and she dyes her hair. I think it’s a shrimp pink now.”
—Adele Comandini, and Edward Sutherland. Michael O’Brien (Charles Winninger)
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“This great purple butterfly,
In the prison of my hands,
Has a learning in his eye
Not a poor fool understands.
Once he lived a schoolmaster
With a stark, denying look....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)