McDunnough, James Halliday

James McDunnough was born at Toronto, Canada, on May 10, 1877, and studied music before switching to entomology and becoming an authority on the systematics of Lepidoptera and Ephemeroptera. His zoological education commenced at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, Germany, followed by a M.S. from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and then back to Kaiser Wilhelm for a doctorate. From 1910 to 1919 he worked as a curator at William Barnes’ private museum in Decatur, Illinois. In 1919 he left to head the Division of Systematic Entomology at the Canadian National Collection in Ottawa. He served in this capacity for 28 years, accumulating one of the finest collections in North America. McDunnough published over 200 papers on Lepidoptera, 38 on Ephemeroptera, and several on other orders. Important works include “Check list of the Lepidoptera of Canada and the United States of America,” and “Saturniidae of North America.” Over the course of his career he named about 1,500...