F. H. Gravely

Frederic Henry Gravely (7 December 1885 – 1965) was a British arachnologist, entomologist, botanist, zoologist, archaeologist, and curator. From 1920 to 1940 he was Superintendent of the Government Museum, Chennai and Connemara Public Library.

Quotes

• The only representative of this family found by the Abor Expedition was Temnocephala semperi Weber. This species was first found by Semper on crabs in Luzon and Mindanao, from the plains up to an altitude of 5000 ft. (1872, p. 307). It has since proved to have a wide distribution in the Oriental Region ...
  The creatures are extremely contractile and their great activity is most striking—indeed it is apt to be startling the first time living specimens are seen. They live, often in large numbers, on the lower surface of the body and among the basal joints of the legs of their host, which is apparently always a crab of the genus Potamon ...
  When separated from its host, T. semperi stands and waves its tentacles around, as though trying to perceive a new one, or crawls rapidly about. Occasionally, when it is greatly irritated, the tentacles are doubled back and tucked away beneath the concave ventral surface of the body.
  • (1913) . "article XVI. Temnocephalidae". Records of the Indian Museum 8: 229–232, followed by 2 plates.

• The Vijayanagar kings, though they continued the building of immense gopuras, concentrated attention on the mandapas or pillared halls, marvellousily developing the carving of their many rows of monolithic pillars, as may be well seen in Conjeeveram and Vellure.
  • (1936) . "An Outline of Indian Temple Architecture". Bulletin of the Madras Government Museum: New series, general section 3 (2): 14. (23 pages; text at archive.org)

• As the value of the paraffin wax in checking the depredations of termites (whiteants) does not seem to be generally known, I should like to call your readers’ attention to it through your columns.
  My first knowledge of it came from. sleeping on the ground when camping in a Madras compound which proved to be riddled with termite runs. Several of us used water-proof ground-sheets that we had prepared from unbleached calico by sprinkling grated paraffin wax over it and then running this into the fibre by passing a very hot iron very slowly over it. In the morning the undersides of these ground-sheets were found to be covered wih termite mud, but to be unharmed and to have served as a complete protection to everything upon them, whereas all campers without them had had their blankets and some even their pyjamas badly eaten, some of the blankets having been reduced to rags.
  At that time termites were a constant menace to the books in the Connemara Public Library, where almost all the shelves were built into the walls. In view of the above experience, therefore, I tried coating the insides of all the book-cases with paraffin wax. A great improvement resulted immediately, though termites quickly found their way through any small gaps that had inadvertently been left. This incidentally made these easy to locate and to fill in, since when all trouble from termites has ceased, the danger having been completely and apparently finally averted, for it is now a number of years since the treatment was effected. And the same method has subsequently been used with equal success in almirahs and boxes elsewhere.
  • (1945) . "Paraffin Wax as a Protection against Termites". Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society 45: 439–440.

External links

• Encyclopedic article on F. H. Gravely on Wikipedia
• Data related to Gravely on Wikispecies