Henry Denny

For other people named Henry Denny, see Henry Denny (disambiguation).

Henry Denny (1803–1871) was an English museum curator at the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society as well as an entomologist. He is known as an authority on parasites. He authored a monograph in 1842 concerning a species of British lice, known as Anoplura.

A good friend of Charles Darwin, Denny would correspond with Darwin throughout his lifetime. He is referenced in Darwin's most well-known ideological treatise "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex". Darwin used information he had gleaned from letters Denny had sent him to support his main theory on race. One of these pieces of correspondence can be found in Part One of Darwin's book, in the section entitled "Race":

"...And yet, on Martial's testimony, humans no different from each other than Englishmen and Sandwich Islanders carried lice so different from each other that there was no cross-infestation." 

Charles Darwin would nonetheless use this somewhat banal and bland passage as supporting evidence in his treatise to claim racial inequality as a sort of "necessary evil". His audience, found at all levels of European and colonial societies, would cling to Darwin's efforts. His work was taken as scientific fact and used as evidence in favour of a long-held belief that racial inequality belonged to a fault of nature, and therefore, was God.

Life

Denny was the first salaried curator of the Leeds Museum, then the museum of the Leeds Literary and Philosophical Society, appointed in 1825. He held that post for 45 years. Also in 1825, he published a monograph on the British species of ant-loving beetles in the genus Pselaphus. The British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1842 made a grant to Denny for the study of British Anoplura; William Kirby tried to bring him in as illustrator of his Introduction to Entomology, though without success.

Denny died at Leeds on 7 March 1871, at the age of 68.

Works

Ricinus bombycillae, named by Denny (1842), from the genus Amblycera of parasites

Denny's published writings were:

• Monographia Pselaphorum et Scydmænorum Britanniæ; or an Essay on the British species of the genera Pselaphus of Herbst, and Scydmænus of Latreille, Norwich, 1825.
• Monographia Anoplurorum Britanniæ; or an Essay on the British species of Parasitic Insects belonging to the order Anoplura of Leach, London, 1842.

Notes

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1888). "Denny, Henry". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 14. London: Smith, Elder & Co.