Joseph Philippe de Clairville (1742–July 31, 1830) was a notable French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 botanist and entomologist, who was mainly active in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. De Clairville’s collection of Coleoptera, his chief interest, is in the Natural History Museum in Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

. He was also interested in Diptera

Diptera

Diptera , or true flies, is the order of insects possessing only a single pair of wings on the mesothorax; the metathorax bears a pair of drumstick like structures called the halteres, the remnants of the hind wings. It is a large order, containing an estimated 240,000 species, although under half...

 and Odonata

Odonata

Odonata is an order of insects, encompassing dragonflies and damselflies . The word dragonfly is also sometimes used to refer to all Odonata, but the back-formation odonate is a more correct English name for the group as a whole...

.

After his stay in Nyon

Nyon

Nyon is a municipality in the district of Nyon in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located some 25 kilometers north east of Geneva's city centre, and since the 1970s it has become part of the Geneva metropolitan area. It lies on the shores of Lake Geneva, and is the seat of the district of...

 and Bex

Bex

Bex is a municipality in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, located in the district of Aigle. It is a few miles south of its sister town municipality of Aigle.-The Bex Salt Mine:Bex is the site of a famous salt mine....

 in the French speaking part of Switzerland, he moved to Winterthur

Winterthur

Winterthur is a city in the canton of Zurich in northern Switzerland. It has the country's sixth largest population with an estimate of more than 100,000 people. In the local dialect and by its inhabitants, it is usually abbreviated to Winti...

 in 1782, where he lived the most time until his death in 1830.

De Clairville wrote Helvetische Entomologie published in Zurich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

 in 1798 and translated Naturgeschichte der Hof- und Stubenvögel by Johann Matthäus Bechstein

Johann Matthäus Bechstein

Johann Matthäus Bechstein was a German naturalist, forester, ornithologist and entomologist. In Great Britain, he was known for his treatise on singing birds .-Biography:Bechstein was born in Waltershausen in the district of Gotha in Thuringia...

into French under the titles Manuel de l'amateur des oiseaux de volière (1825).

Sources

• Duméril, C. A. M. C. 1823: [Biographien] - Paris; Strasbourg, F. G. Levrault 262
• Evenhuis, N. L. 1997: Litteratura taxonomica dipterorum (1758-1930). Volume 1 (A-K); Volume 2 (L-Z). - Leiden, Backhuys Publishers 1; 2 VII+1-426; 427-871
• Geilinger 1935: [Clairville, J. P. de] - Mitt. naturw. Ges. Winterthur 19
• Kiauta, B. 1978: [Clairville, J. P. de] - Odonatologica 7(3)
• Mitlheilungen der Nanturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft Winterthur, 19, 1932, p. 255-291.