Uncles and Ovals

I'm looking a bit more into the activities of Arthur Gardiner Butler, lepidopterist, ornithologist, oologist, and my great-grandfather's brother. I've always found his dapper (for a Butler) appearance rather striking, and seemed to perceive a twinkling humour in his eye that isn't always terribly obvious with my forebears.



(What kind of flower is he wearing in his buttonhole, by the way? I know his father favoured jessamine.)

I'm sure Arthur was never less than respectable, but one of the appealing things about him is his willingness to let the personal intrude into his scientific accounts. I've recorded elsewhere his habit of breeding finches in cigar boxes and his use of homely comparisons, which give his professional studies (he was for many decades Assistant Keeper of the Department of Zoology at the British Museum) an air of hobbyist enthusiasm. There's also something quite disarming about such confessions as this, from his British Birds' Eggs: A Handbook of British Oology (1886):

To draw an egg correctly is no easy task, as I found to my cost. Not only must all the spots be drawn reversed and in perspective, but (in order to give rotundity to the figure) the egg must be correctly shaded. After spoiling the appearance of my first six or seven plates by carefully indicating the shadows visible upon them, and, instead of a rounded surface, producing a resemblance to a dish, a mushroom, or a plum, it became evident that most of these malformed appearances were the result of shadows cast upon the eggs by window-sashes, box-lids, and other objects which intercepted the light.

As someone even less capable of drawing an egg, I entirely sympathise - but how many scientists would record their failures in such a way?