292 
A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF 
[hewitson 
Hewitson (William Chapman), 1806-78 
Hewitson, tlie second son of Mr. Middleton Hewitson, 
was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne on January 9, 1806. He 
was educated at Kirkby Stephen and York, and subsequently 
articled to Mr. John Tuke, land surveyor, of York, in which 
city he resided until at least 1828, though he was practising 
his profession in his native city in 1831. He showed his love 
for natural history at an early age, for he occupied himself 
with oological and entomological pursuits at school, con- 
tinued them at York, and published the first part of his 
British Oology, which he intended to form a sequel to Yarrell’s 
British Birds, in 1831, and completed it in 1838. Subsequent 
editions were issued in 1846 and 1856. It is still a standard 
work and esteemed for the exactness of the figures. 
In February 1829, the Natural History Society of 
Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-on-Tyne was 
formed, and held its first meeting on August 19 of that year. 
Hewitson was a member of the first Committee, and one of 
the Secretaries in 1833 and 1834, while later he became a 
Vice-President. In 1832 he travelled to the Shetland 
Islands, and returned with a fine series of eggs ; and in 1833 
he accompanied his friends John Hancock and Benjamin 
Johnson to Norway; while in 1848, after a last expedition 
with John Hancock to Switzerland and the Alps, where he 
made a fine collection of diurnal lepidoptera, he settled down 
at Oatlands Park in Surrey. 
During the last thirty years of his life he devoted himself 
specially to entomology, one of the results being the publica- 
tion (1852-77) of his Illustrations of Exotic Butterflies. He 
drew on stone all the figures of his lepidoptera with minutest 
accuracy, and also coloured them himself. 1 He was a 
member of several learned bodies, including the Entomological, 
Zoological, and Linnean Societies, and a friend of Alfred 
Newton, Wolley, Yarrell, and other naturalists. To the 
1 The figures in the British Oology were, according to W. Wood, “ coloured by Mr. 
J. Standish.” 
