José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage (1823, Funchal

Funchal

Funchal is the largest city, the municipal seat and the capital of Portugal's Autonomous Region of Madeira. The city has a population of 112,015 and has been the capital of Madeira for more than five centuries.-Etymology:...

, Madeira

Madeira

Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union...

 - 1907, Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

, Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

) was a Portuguese zoologist and politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

. He was the curator of Zoology at the Museum of Natural History in Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

. He published numerous works on mammal

Mammal

Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...

s, bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s, and fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

es. In the 1880s he became the Minister of the Navy and later the Minister for Foreign Affairs for Portugal. The zoology collection at the Lisbon Museum is called the Bocage Museum in his honor.

Bocage studied at the University of Coimbra from 1839 to 1846. He became lecturer of the chair of Zoology at the Polytechnic School, Lisbon (later the Science Faculty of the University of Lisbon) in 1851, where he taught for more than 30 years. In 1858, he became also the scientific director and curator of Zoology of the Natural History Museum of the Polytechnic School. which was established as a support for the chair.

His work at the Museum consisted in acquiring, describing and coordinating collections, many of which arrived from the Portuguese colonies in Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, such as Angola

Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...

, Mozambique

Mozambique

Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest...

, etc., sent by noted naturalists such as José Alberto de Oliveira Anchieta

José Alberto de Oliveira Anchieta

José Alberto de Oliveira Anchieta was a 19th century Portuguese explorer and naturalist who, between 1866 and 1897, travelled extensively in Angola, Africa, collecting animals and plants...

 (1832–1897). For this purpose, Bocage standardized the procedures for collecting, preparing and sending specimens to the Museum in his book “Instrucções Practicas sobre o Modo de Colligir, Preparar e Remetter Productos Zoológicos para o Museu de Lisboa” (1862). In 1860 he succeeded in getting back some collections which were removed from the Museum during the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal, which include precious specimens collected by the French naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories...

 (1772–1844) in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

.

In 1875 he was elected Vice-President of the Academia Real das Ciências de Lisboa

Sciences Academy of Lisbon

The Sciences Academy of Lisbon ' was created in 1779 in Lisbon, Portugal, as an institution dedicated to the advancement of science and learning with the goal of promoting academic progress and prosperity to the country...

. He retired from educational and scientific activities in 1880 but remained director of the Museum until he devoted his remaining life to politics, first as the Minister of Navy and Ultramarine Possessions and later as MInister of Foreign Affairs, from 1883 to 1886.

Bocage published more than 200 taxonomic

Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...

 papers about mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and many others. He was responsible for identifying many new species, which he named according to the naturalist who found them (for example, dozens of new species received the anchietae apod).

José Vicente was a second cousin of the famous poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 Manuel Maria Barbosa de Bocage (1765–1805). On April 10, 1905, a governmental decree renamed the zoological section of the National Museum of Lisbon as the "Museu José Vicente Barboza du Bocage".

Selected works

• A ornitologia dos Açores, 1866
• Aves das possessões portuguesas d’ Africa occidental que existem no Museu de Lisboa, da 1ª à 24ª lista, 1868 a 1882
• Lista dos répteis das possessões portuguesas d’ Africa occidental que existem no Museu de Lisboa, 1866
• Notice sur un batracien nouveau du Portugal, 1864
• Diagnose de algumas espécies inéditas da família Squalidae que frequentam os nossos mares, 1864
• Peixes plagiostomos, 1866
• Ornithologie d’ Angola, 1881 and 1877
• Herpethologie d’ Angola et du Congo, 1895.

External links

• J.V. Barbosa du Bocage. A very complete site, with biography, list of publications, letters, etc. (In Portuguese)