Harold John Burkill (1871-1956)
Burkill was born in Leeds. He was first educated at Cheltenham College and in 1891 was admitted to Cambridge University. He obtained a B.A. degree and later an M.A. He eventually joined the London Stock Exchange.
His knowledge of birds, plants and insects was considerable. By 1901 he had acquired a good knowledge of plant galls. He pursued this interest in his walks at Barnes, Wimbledon Commons and Kew gardens and on holidays with friends in the North of England and Scotland. Burkill joined the Society in 1915 and found other members with an interest in plant galls. Using Connold’s recently published identification books, and Swanton’s ‘British Plant Galls’, Burkill and others were encouraged to form a Plant Galls Section.
For thirty three years Burkill was the stimulus for this Section. (Tremayne 1957; Ross and Parmenter 1957). He spent much time and labour searching for galls in the field. He published many papers and short notes and frequently exhibited galls, etc.at meetings. He was one of the leading cecidologists of the time.
In 1916 Burkill published a list of gall species that he had recorded from around Thorpe in Derbyshire on several extended visits (Burkill 1916b).
In the LNHS gall collection several Derbyshire specimens are attributed to Burkill for this period and it is probable that all the Derbyshire specimens collected before 1916 are his. In 1916 he also published a list of gall species new to Britain from Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Devon (Burkill 1916a). He states that these were collected on holidays and family visits so it is likely that specimens in the collection, collected during the same period from these locations, can also be attributed to him. In short, it appears that after organising the formation of the LNHS gall section, and after proposing the creation of a gall collection, he donated many of his own specimens to start the collection off. It is indeed possible that many of the later unattributed specimens were also collected by Burkill but no information has been found to confirm this.
H. J. Burkill contributed sixteen specimens to the LNHS gall collection. View here
For further information see his obituary in the London Naturalist