Andrews, William

Andrews, William (1802–80), naturalist, is said to have been born in Chichester, Sussex, England. Nothing is known of his family background or education; he is probably not the same as a William Andrews in Alumni Dublinenses, but he seems to have lived in Dublin as a young man, and to have been an army agent and a merchant in Dublin. He was a founder member and later secretary and president of the Dublin Natural History Society. He worked on the botany of the Aran islands, and on Irish saxifrages, and discovered a variety (Andrewesii) of the Killarney fern Trichomanes radicans. His lack of precision in identifying collection sites, and his habit of distributing cultivated specimens of plants, led to distrust of his botanical work, and it is no longer cited. However, Andrews also worked on marine fishes, and was an acknowledged expert on salmonidae; he discovered a new slug species, the Kerry slug. He was one of the first to publish papers on fisheries, and published over fifty scientific papers in all. He was elected MRIA on 10 January 1842, and was Brazilian consul in 1850. He died 11 March 1880 in Monkstown, Co. Dublin, survived by his wife Elizabeth, whose maiden name was probably Lewis; they had probably married in Dublin in 1831. It is not known if they had children.