# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Harris, Moses

​HARRIS, MOSES (fl. 1766–1785), entomologist and engraver, is said to have been born in 1731. From his uncle, Moses Harris, a member of an old-established Aurelian society, he derived his first instruction in the science to which from childhood he was strongly attached. He afterwards became secretary to a new Aurelian society. His circumstances appear to have been comparatively easy, though he had reason to complain of losses occasioned by the ‘unsteady and fallacious Behaviour of a Person too nearly connected in my Concerns’ (Introduction to the Aurelian). Though without much knowledge, he was an acute and industrious observer, and a good entomological artist. For twenty years he engaged as a labour of love in drawing, engraving, and colouring insects, chiefly moths and butterflies, which he published under the title of ‘The Aurelian, or Natural History of English Insects, namely Moths and Butterflies, together with the Plants on which they feed,’ fol. London, 1766, forty-five plates, with descriptive text. Four additional plates, with table of terms, index, and designations of Linnæus, were afterwards published separately. The book was reissued in 1778, 1794, and in 1840 under the editorship of J. O. Westwood. The insects were all drawn by Harris from the life, the engraving was his first attempt, and the colouring is very brilliant. The descriptions are both accurate and perspicuous. In the frontispiece the author gives a portrait of himself arrayed in full insect-hunting costume, and reposing on a bank with a large chip box of butterflies in his hand. He afterwards published: 1. ‘An Essay precedeing [sic] a Supplement to the Aurelian, wherein are considered the Tendons and Membranes of the Wings of Butterflies. … Illustrated with copper-plates’ (in English and French), 4to, London (1767). 2. ‘The English Lepidoptera, or the Aurelian's Pocket Companion, containing a Catalogue of upward of four hundred Moths and Butterflies,’ 8vo, London, 1775. 3. ‘An Exposition of English Insects’ (in English and French), 4to, London, 1776. Copies were issued with new title-pages, dated 1781, 1782, 1783, and 1786. 4. ‘Natural System of Colours’ (edited by Thomas Martyn), 4to, London, 1811. Sir Joshua Reynolds accepted the dedication of the edition of this work, published apparently in the author's lifetime. Some discoveries ascribed to zoologists of the present century were anticipated by Harris (cf. art. ‘Aurelian’ in Retrospective Review, 2nd ser. i. 230–45). Besides the above works, the plates of which were all drawn, etched, and coloured by himself, he executed in like manner most of those in the three volumes of Dru Drury's ‘Illustrations of Natural History’ (exotic insects), 4to, 1770–82, a book which owes its chief value to the excellence of its illustrations. He likewise contributed some trifling drawings to the ‘Catalogue’ of Andrew Peter Dupont's collection of natural curiosities, now in the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 18904–10). From a letter of Dru Drury to Harris, dated 5 April 1770, it appears that the latter was then residing some distance from London, was married, and had a son (memoir of Drury in Jardine's Naturalist's Library, 1843, ​ i. 47–9). Thomas Martyn, in his preface to the new edition of Harris's ‘Natural System of Colours,’ 1811, speaks of him as being ‘nearly thirty years deceased;’ but according to Graves's ‘Dictionary of Artists,’ p. 108, he had exhibited a frame of English insects at the Royal Academy in 1785.
[Jardine's Naturalist's Library, 1843, i. 54, 55, 57 (Memoir of Dru Drury); Redgrave's Dict. of Artists, 1878, p. 199; Lowndes's Bibl. Manual (Bohn), ii. 1003; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. v. 458; Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, p. 388.]
G. G.