Francesco Cetti was born in Mannheim,
Germany (although his
parents were natives of Como, Italy), educated in Lombardy and at the age of
sixteen entered the Jesuit College at Monza. Cetti became highly regarded as a
mathematician, philosopher and theologian.
When the King of Sardinia invited the Jesuits to help
improve education on the island, Cetti was one of a number of distinguished men
sent there in 1765. The following year
he was appointed to the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Sassari
on the island and he remained in this position until his death more than twenty
years later.
Whenever he could Cetti would escape the confines of the
town and make journeys along the coast and into the mountains where he
constantly made new discoveries which he collated into his great work, Natural
History of Sardinia. Volumes of this
work were published in 1774, 1776 and 1777.
The first dealt with quadrupeds and the second was devoted to
ornithology and covered most of Sardinia’s
birds, including a rusty coloured warbler which Marmora later dedicated to
Cetti. Two later volumes dealt with
Icthyology and insects and fossils.
Cetti died as the last volume was nearing completion.
Forty years after Cetti’s death, Alberto della Marmora
travelled extensively to Sardinia and whilst
there collected both Eleanora’s Falcon and Cetti’s Warbler. Marmora named the warbler Sylvia Cetti in1820
in honour of the Jesuit priest, however Temminck is credited as the first to fully
describe the species as his description was published slightly earlier in the
same year. The English name was given
soon afterwards in 1823, by John Latham.
At the time the breeding range of Cetti’s Warbler was
limited to the Mediterranean area, but by the beginning of the twentieth
century it began a gradual progression northwards through France. The first reliable record of the species in Britain
occurred in 1961 and numbers have now increased rapidly.
Marmora (who was aided in his studies by Franco Bonelli,
Professor of Zoology at Turin University) benefitted greatly fro Cetti’s previous
studies in Sardinia. As well as rediscovering Cetti’s warbler he
also found a new species which he named Sylvia sarda, now known in English as
Marmora’s Warbler. Once again Temminck’s
description appeared months before Marmora had his description published, so it
is Temminck who receives credit as the first describer!
6th Nov.
Samuel Hood and I were very pleased to be invited to give our
presentation, A Focus on Great Crested Grebes to the Alnwick
and District Natural History Society.
It’s always a pleasure to make this presentation as we (Samuel in
particular) have spent so much time over several years watching these birds on
the lake. It has led us to take a deeper
interest in the other eighteen species of grebe (some seriously threatened)
around the world. Of course three
species of grebe have already been lost to extinction in fairly recent years,
these being the Columbian Grebe (that some might argue was a sub species of
Black-necked Grebe), Atitlan Grebe of Guatemala and the Alaotra Grebe of Madagascar.
