Robert Templeton - Work On Birds and Mammals

Work On Birds and Mammals

Templeton also studied the vertebrates of the island, especially the fish, birds and monkeys. Amongst the birds were five endemic species new to science. These were described by Edward Blyth in the Calcutta Journal as Athene castanotus, the chestnut-winged hawk owl; Malacocercus rufescens, the red dung thrush; Dicrurus edoliformis, the kingcrow, Dicrurus leucopyygialis the Ceylon kingcrow, and Eulabes ptilogenes, Templeton's mynah. The monkeys were studiously appraised and some of the results communicated to the Zoological Society of London. These communications, one of the monkey Cercopithecus pileatus and the loris Loris gracilis and the other on a supposed new species Semnopithecus leucoprymnus cephalopterus which turned out to be identical with Bennet's Semnopithecus nestor, are Templetons only personal contribution to the literature on the vertebrates of Ceylon. His knowledge of the smaller mammals, birds, reptiles and fishes was instead incorporated in the work of others, notably George Robert Waterhouse and his coworker Edgar Leopold Layard who in the introduction to Notes on the ornithology of Ceylon says I have had the advantage of consulting with Mr. Blyth and Drs. Templeton and Kelaart with each of whom i have been on terms of the closest intimacy and we mutually communicated our discoveries

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