PAYKULL, GUSTAF

(b. Stockholm, Sweden, 21 August 1757; d. Vallox-Säby, Sweden, 28 January 1826)

entomology.

Paykull, a civil servant, became a chamberlain at the royal court in 1796 and was appointed master of the royal household in 1815. He received the title of baron in 1818.

In his twenties Paykull had a moderately successful career in literature, and wrote dramas and satirical plays. Later, however, his interest turned to natural history, where the possibilities for original contributions were decidedly greater than in belles letters. On his estate, Vallox-Säby, in Uppland, he amassed the largest private zoological collection ever assembled in Scandinavia. The bird collections reportedly occupid 1,362 drawers, and the insects were said to have included 8,600 species. The shellfish and fish collections were comparatively large, but the collection of animals preserved in alcohol was unimportant. The extensive group of the larger tropical mammals—lion, leopard, camel, zebra—was noteworthy. Some of Paykull’s animals were purchase during foreign travels—in Holland and France, for instance. The entire collection was donated in 1819 to the state and became the nucleus of the present National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

Although Paykull was a general zoologist, his primary interest was in entomology, and it was there that he made his lasting contributions. His first publications (1785–1786) concerned moths; he later concentrated on beetles, although he did produce a short article on Lepidoptera in 1793. His main work Fauna Suecica, appeared in three parts (1798–1800). Intending from the outset to publish a complete Swedish fauna, Paykull began with the insects—“to finish them off.” His aim not realized, however, and the three published volumes concern only beetles. An extraordinarily fine and well executed work, it clearly shows Paykull’s taxonomical competence. In his Fauna, as well as in smaller monographs on various beetle families, Paykull accurately described a great number of new species.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Paykull’s major writings are Monographia staphylinorum sueciac(Uppsala, 1789); Monographia caraborum Sueciae (Uppsala, 1790); Monographia Curculionum Sueciae (Uppsala, 1792); Fauna Suecica. Insecta, 3 cols. (Uppsala, 1789–1800); and Monographia histeroidum (Uppsala, 1811). For the best account of Paykull and his work see Sten Lindroth, Kungl. Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Historia 1759–1818, II (Stockholm, 1967), Passim.

Bengt-Olof Landin