Home > Thomas Pennant

The Pennants were a Welsh gentry family from the parish of Whitford, Flintshire, who had built up a modest estate at Bychton by the seventeenth century. In 1724 Thomas' father, David Pennant, also inherited the neighbouring Downing estate from a cousin, considerably augmenting the family's fortune. Downing Hall, where Thomas was born in the 'yellow room', became the main Pennant residence.

Pennant received his early education at Wrexham grammer school, before moving to Thomas Croft's school in Fulham in 1740. In 1744 entered Queen's College, Oxford, later moving to Oriel College. Like many students from a wealthy background, he left Oxford without taking a degree, although in 1771 his work as a zoologist was recognised with an honorary degree.

At the age of twelve, Pennant later recalled, he had been inspired with a passion for natural history through being presented with Francis Willughby's Ornithology. A tour in Cornwall in 1746-1747, where he met the antiquary and naturalist William Borlase, awakened an interest in mineralMinerals are natural compounds formed through geological processes. The term "mineral" encompasses not only the material's chemical composition but also the mineral structures. Minerals range in composition from pure elements and simple salts to very comps and fossils which formed his main scientific study during the 1750s. In 1750, his account of an earthquakeAn earthquake is a trembling or shaking movement of the Earth's surface. Earthquakes typically result from the movement of faults, quasi-planar zones of deformation within its uppermost layers. The word earthquake is also widely used to indicate the sourc at Downing was inserted in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal SocietyThe Royal Society of London is claimed to be the oldest learned society still in existence and was founded in 1660. The Royal Irish Academy, founded in 1782, is also closely affiliated with it. The Royal Society of Edinburgh (founded 1783) is a separate S, where there also appeared in 1756 a paper on several coralCorals are gastrovascular marine cnidarians (phylum Cnidaria; class Anthozoa) existing as small anemone-like polyps, typically forming colonies of many individuals. The group includes the important reef builders known as hermatypic corals, found in tropicloid bodies he had collected at CoalbrookdaleCoalbrookdale, a town on Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, England, was one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution. It was where Abraham Darby first used coke to smelt iron in 1709. Telford and Wrekin Industrial Revolution., ShropshireShropshire (abbreviated Salop or Salops is a county in the West Midlands of England, bordering Cheshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and the Welsh preserved counties of Powys and Clwyd. Shropshire is one of England's most rural counties.. More practically, Pennant used his geological knowledge to open a lead mine, which helped to finance improvements at Downing after he inherited in 1763.

In 1757, at the instance of Carolus LinnaeusCarolus Linnaeus (later, Carl von Linn ( May 23, 1707 January 10, 1778) was a Swedish scientist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of taxonomy. He is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology (see History of ecology). Biography Carl, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Society of Sciences. In 1766 he published the first part of his British Zoology, a work meritorious rather as a laborious compilation than as an original contribution to science. During its progress he visited the continent and made the acquaintance of Buffon, Voltaire, Haller and Pallas.

In 1767 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1771 his Synopsis of Quadrupeds was published; it was later expanded into a History of Quadrupeds. At the end of the same year he published A Tour in Scotland in 1769, which proved remarkably popular and was followed in 1774 by an account of another journey in Scotland, in two volumes. These works have proved invaluable as preserving the record of important antiquarian relics which have now perished. In 1778 he brought out a similar Tour in Wales, which was followed by a Journey to Snowdon (part one in 1781; part two in 1783), afterwards forming the second volume of the Tour.

In 1782 he published a Journey from Chester to London. He brought out Arctic Zoology in 1785-1787. In 1790 appeared his Account of London, which went through a large number of editions, and three years later he published the autobiographical Literary Life of the late T. Pennant. In his later years he was engaged on a work entitled Outlines of the Globe, volumes one and two of which appeared in 1798, and volumes three and four, edited by his son David Pennant, in 1800. He was also the author of a number of minor works, some of which were published posthumously. He died at Downing.

His correspondence with Gilbert White was the basis for White's book The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne .

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911 Britannica