Percy Tarlton Rayment FRZS (27 November 1882 – 17 June 1964) was an Australian

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

 artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

, author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, broadcaster

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...

, 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...

, naturalist

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

, entomologist and beekeeper

Beekeeper

A beekeeper is a person who keeps honey bees for the purposes of securing commodities such as honey, beeswax, pollen, royal jelly; pollinating fruits and vegetables; raising queens and bees for sale to other farmers; and/or for purposes satisfying natural scientific curiosity...

 of English origin. He was born in Reading, Berkshire

Reading, Berkshire

Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....

, moved to Australia as a young man, and died in Melbourne, Victoria. He is especially renowned for his extensive pioneering studies of Australia’s native bee

Bee

Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...

s.

Apart from numerous papers and articles in the entomological literature and in natural history journals and popular magazines, books authored by Rayment include:

• 1916 - Money in Bees in Australasia. Whitcombe & Tombs: Melbourne. (Handbook to beekeeping).
• 1933 - The Prince of the Totem. Robertson & Mullens: Melbourne. (Collection of Aboriginal tales and legends for children).
• 1935 - A Cluster of Bees. Endeavour Press: Sydney. (Major monograph comprising 60 essays on Australian bees).
• 1937 - The Valley of the Sky. Ivor Nicholson & Watson: London. (Novel).
• 1945 - Eagles and Earthlings. A metrical tribute to the air crews in the war. Author. (Poetry).
• 1946 - Profitable Honey Plants of Australasia. Whitcombe & Tombs: Melbourne. (Handbook to beekeeping).
• 1953 - Bees of the Portland District. Portland Field Naturalists Club.