S.A. White Collection : Diggles, The Ornithology of Australia

Silvester Diggles (1817-1880)

Naturalist, artist and musician, born on 24 January 1817, the eldest son of Edward Holt Diggles, ironmonger of Liverpool. Diggles emigrated to Australia, arriving at Sydney in November 1853.

After a visit to Brisbane in late 1854, he returned and settled in Sydney teaching drawing and music and also practised as a tuner and repairer of musical instruments.  Diggles helped to found the colony’s first scientific institution, the Queensland Philosophical Society, on 1 March 1859 and published several papers in its Transactions. He acted for many years as honorary curator of the Philosophical Society’s small museum, established in the old windmill observatory on Wickham Terrace in 1862. His special interests were ornithology and entomology, through which he had a wide circle of friends and correspondents.

His major achievement was the publication of The Ornithology of Australia which was not completed due to lack of funds. Diggles’s major contribution to the knowledge of Australian fauna, however, was through the extensive collections of insects, particularly butterflies, moths and beetles, which he sent to overseas entomologists for description. In 1875 his health began to fail, due partly to worry over the Ornithology. He died at Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, on 21 March 1880, survived by two daughters of his first marriage and two sons of the second.