Nature Notes Volume 2
1924
Book Description: Green Cloth Hard Cover with pasted Colour Plates and Black and Photographs
Condition: Good
Price:R200
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About the Author:
Sydney Harold Skaife ('Stacey') D.Sc FRSSAf. (12 December 1889 – 6 November 1976) was an eminent South African entomologist andnaturalist. His career and educational publications covered a wide field [1] [2] [3][4]. Especially in his later years his main research interest was in social insects and the transitional phases in sociality, particularly in the Hymenoptera and Isoptera[5] [6].
He was also a school inspector, prolific author of scientific and popular books, broadcaster, and conservationist. Of his many achievements his greatest was probably his leading role in the creation of the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve between Cape Town and Cape Point. He lived for most of his life in Hout Bay on the Cape Peninsula.
n 1918 he became the first South African to receive a Carnegie Grant for further study. In 1920 he received an M.Sc. at the Natal University College. From 1921 to 1945 he was the Inspector of Science in the Cape Department of Education. In 1922 he received a PhD from the University of Cape Town for his research on bean weevils or Bruchids. In those days they were regarded as comprising the family Bruchidae, though currently they are classified as the subfamily Bruchinae of the family Chrysomelidae. Africa has a rich Bruchid fauna, many of them dependent on thorn trees and other indigenous leguminous plants. In the relaxed railway schedules of the time, he sometimes found opportunities to collect new species from thorn trees during halts.[1]
During this period he found time to edit Nature Notes (1924-1931) and become one of the first people to make a radio broadcast in South Africa, in which he talked on scorpions (1925).
In 1929 he established the Wild Life Protection and Conservation Society (now called the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa, WESSA), largely as a result of his concern at the widespread destruction of game in Zululand as part of the tsetse fly control campaign. In his capacity as chairman, he helped to establish the Outeniqua Mountain Zebra Reserve, the Bontebok Park, and the Addo Elephant Reserve.
