Henry James Stovin Pryer

Henry James Stovin Pryer (10 June 1850 - 17 February 1888 ) also known as Harry Pryer, The couple had six children: Isabel Jane, Annette, Thomas Neremiah, William Burgess, Jessy Courtney and Henry James Stovin who was born on 10 June 1850 and baptised at Saint Paul's, Bunhill Row, Finsbury on 3 March 1851. Isabel Pryer appears on the 1851 England Census, taken on the night of 30 March 1851, as a widow looking after her six children (including 9 month old Henry) with a live-in nurse and cook.

In 1856 Pryer's older sister Isabel Jane married Joseph Thorne, a Merchant who with his brother Augustus ran Thorne and Company, a textile trading business with links to Hong Kong and China. Isabel and Joseph Thorne would live in Shanghai, China for several years due to Joseph's work. Pryer's older brother William became a clerk working for Thorne and Company, and was also based in Shanghai. Following his siblings by travelling to Asia, Henry Pryer is described as first going to Japan in 1870

A carte-de-visite photograph of 'The Bluff, looking Eastwards, Yokohama' by W.P. Floyd of Hong Kong

By 1875 Pryer was living in Yokohama, Japan. now Yamate District, once known as the gaikokujin kyoryūchi (foreign settlement). Pryer initially worked as a Clerk for Adamson, Bell and Company (later Dodwell & Co.), a company which traded tea and silk.

Pryer was described as having a retiring but amiable disposition, and being a good friend to people who knew him well. Siblings Isabel and William had also shown interest in science from a young age, so Pryer had a supportive family. In the same volume Pryer gives his detailed methodology for collecting and preserving insect specimens - Pryer favoured the "Continental system" with insects being set flat and high on a long pin to avoid damage and accommodate labels underneath as opposed to the English system (using short pins) which he felt was 'a decided mistake.' Pryer also criticised entomologists who did not properly catalogue or label their collections: 'Most specimens have no intrinsic value; it is the facts concerning them which are of instruction and value.'

Pryer's butterfly collection included examples from all over Japan: he mentions studying specimens from Yokohama, Yezo [Ezo, northeast Honshu], Nagasaki, Tosa (southern Shikoku), Gifu Prefecture, Nikkō, Asama-yama ( Mount Asama), Ohoyama, Tonosawa, Atami, Kanozan, Mount Fuji, Ontakisan ( Mount Ontake), Yamato, Ogasawara, Ryukyu, possibly the Kuriles, Niigata, Ô-Yama, Chichibu, Usui-toge, Maibashi [ Maebashi], Sonogi, Hachijo, Kanosan and Tokyo. Pryer's obituary in The Japan Weekly Mail notes that Pryer had a weak constitution, was not in the habit of collecting his own specimens and 'abstented from the healthy exercise of personally collecting specimens of natural history' because he instead concentrated on his business and studies. ), "Fenton" of Tokyo (possibly John William Fenton), Mr Maries of Nikkō (probably Charles Maries), and a Mr Ota of Nagasaki.

In 1878, with Thomas Blakiston, Pryer published a catalogue of the birds of Japan. The paper contains observations of bird habitat and behaviours, observed or compiled from correspondence by the authors, and the Japanese-language names for each species. although a contemporary Zoo catalogue suggests there was a question mark as to how wild it actually was. In 1879, Pryer sent the Society a living male example of the Japanese serow Capricornis crispus, the first time the living species had been seen in the U.K. The serow was described as suffering in confinement on its long voyage to England, losing weight, and being aggressive with a companion animal placed in its enclosure when it first arrived at the zoo, though it improved in health after some time.

Sickness and death Pryer contracted bronchial pneumonia and died at his home in Yokohama on 17 February 1888 after 12 days. Leech's collection of palearctic butterflies, including Pryer's Japanese material, was gifted to the British Museum by Leech's mother Eliza after Leech died in 1900.

A specimen of the crested ibis (Nipponia nippon), which had belonged to Pryer, then Henry Seebohm, and is now part of the collection of the Natural History Museum (specimen NHMUK:1897.10.30.4), was examined as part of a molecular study using museum specimens to study the historic genetics of the species compared with the current living population now that the species is critically endangered.

In 2018 on Pryer's birthday June 10, local historians led by Kiyoshi Miura held a graveside ceremony at Pryer's memorial in Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery to honour Pryer's contribution to natural history research.

Select publications

Pryer, H.: 'A Large Squid exhibited in Japan' The Zoologist, July 1873, pages 3591-3593 (1873) part III ]