# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Wright, Edward Perceval

​WRIGHT, EDWARD PERCEVAL (1834–1910), naturalist, born in Dublin on 27 Dec. 1834, was eldest son of Edward Wright, LL.D., barrister, of Floraville, Donnybrook, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of Joseph Wright of Beech Hill, Donnybrook. Charles Henry Hamilton Wright [q. v. Suppl. II] was a younger brother. Edward was educated at home, and began the study of natural history under Prof. George James Allman before he entered Trinity College, Dublin, at the end of 1852. In 1854 he commenced the publication of the quarterly ‘Natural History Review,’ which he continued to edit until 1866. His earliest papers contributed to this journal are of a varied character, dealing with rare Irish birds, fungi parasitic upon insects, the collecting of mollusca, and a disease of the minnow. Between 1856 and 1859 he also contributed a series of papers to the Dublin Natural History Society on the British filmy ferns. In 1857 he visited the Mitchelstown caves, where his discovery of blind springtails first showed the interest attaching to the living cave-fauna of Ireland. In the same year he graduated B.A., was made director of the university museum, and became a member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 1858 he was appointed lecturer in zoology in Trinity College, a post which he held for ten years, and was made lecturer in botany in the medical school of Dr. Steevens's Hospital. He was also elected secretary to the Royal Geological Society of Ireland. Wright had taken part in the meeting of the British Association in Dublin in 1857, and at the association's next meeting, at Leeds in 1858, he, in conjunction with Joseph Reay Greene, presented a ‘Report on the Marine Fauna of the Irish coast’; he acted as secretary to Section D for that and succeeding years. To the ‘Proceedings’ of the Dublin University Zoological and Botanical Association, of which he was secretary, he contributed in 1859 papers on Irish Actinidæ and Irish Nudibranchs.
Meanwhile Wright, who had proceeded M.A. in 1859, taking an ad eundem at Oxford, continued his medical studies, and graduated M.D. in 1862. Determining to practise as an oculist, he visited for special study the medical schools of Berlin, Viennna, and Paris, publishing in 1864, from the German of F. C. Donders, ‘The Pathogeny of Squint,’ and a paper in 1865 on ‘A Modification of Liebreich's Ophthalmoscope.’ On his appointment as locum tenens for William Henry Harvey [q. v.], professor of botany at Trinity College (1865), he abandoned ophthalmic surgery for science (1866). He described the flora of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay after a visit in 1865 (see Journ. Bot. 1867; Proc. Dublin Nat. Hist. Soc. 1869), and in conjunction with Huxley the fossils of the Barrow colliery in Kilkenny (Geol. Mag. vol. iii. 1865; Trans. Royal Irish Acad. vol. xxiv. 1871).
In 1867 Wright paid a six months' visit to the Seychelles; and, although his collecting apparatus was lost by shipwreck on the way out, he brought back an important collection of plants and animals (see Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist.; Trans. Roy. Irish Acad.). He spent the spring of 1868 in Sicily and the autumn of the same year in dredging off the coast of Portugal, describing his results in attractive papers.
In 1869 Wright was appointed professor of botany and keeper of the herbarium at Trinity College. As a teacher he was fluent, energetic, and thorough; but he bestowed his chief care upon the arrangement of the herbarium. His continued interest in zoology was shown by his ‘Notes on Sponges,’ especially those of Ireland (Proc. Roy. Irish Acad.; Quarterly Journal of Microscop. Science); in his revision of Figuier's ‘Ocean World’ for Messrs. Cassell in 1872; in his adaptation of the same author's ‘Mammalia’ in 1875; in the ‘Concise Natural History’ of 1885; and, above all, in his report, in conjunction with Dr. T. L. Studer, on the Alcyonaria of the Challenger expedition (vol. xxxi. 1880).
Elected to the council of the Royal Irish Academy in 1870, he acted as secretary from 1874 to 1877, and from 1883 to 1899, carefully supervising the publications. In 1883 he was awarded the Cunningham gold medal [see Cunningham, Timothy].
Besides his professional studies Wright took a keen interest in archæology, and from 1900 to 1902 he was president of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. He spent many vacations on the continent of Europe, and was lamed for life in a carriage accident in Switzerland. In politics he was a strong radical. Owing to heart weakness, he resigned his chair in 1904, but continued to superintend the herbarium, living in his rooms in Trinity ​College and maintaining his interest in his varied studies. He died of bronchitis at Trinity College, Dublin, on 2 March 1910, and was buried at Mount Jerome, Dublin. He married in 1872 Emily, second daughter of Colonel Ponsonby Shaw; she died without issue in 1886.
[The Irish Naturalist, xix. (1910), 61–63 (with portrait); Royal Irish Academy, Abstracts of Minutes, 1909–10, 16 March; Mrs. Janet Ross's The Fourth Generation, 1912.]
G. S. B.