Anderson

Entomologist and Artist
Ernest Anderson

Don Herbison-Evans
(donherbisonevans@yahoo.com)
and
Stella Crossley

Ernest Anderson was a pioneering 19th-century Australian entomologist, lepidopterist, and natural history illustrator. Anderson was a prominent member of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria (FNCV), playing an important role in documenting southeastern Australia's insect life during the late 1800s. He became close friends with Frank Palmer Spry, a fellow FNCV member who worked as a scientific assistant and entomologist at the National Museum of Victoria (now Melbourne Museum). Anderson and Spry co-authored and illustrated the 1893 book Victorian Butterflies and How to Collect Them. Because the museum lacked funding for publications at the time, Anderson and Spry paid to have it published independently by a local Melbourne printer (H. Hearne & Co.) This book provided some of the earliest localized descriptions and highly accurate black-and-white diagnostic drawings of Victorian species.

His highly detailed, structurally precise morphological drawings have been referenced in early entomological journals and modern compilations like the Moths of Victoria series. However: most of his drawings remain unpublished, and are held in the archives of Melbourne Museum

Copies of illustrations in this website by Ernest Anderson :-

Munychryia senicula

unpublished drawings held by Melbourne Museum,
courtesy of Peter Marriott, Moths of Victoria - Part 1

Before making his mark in Australia, Anderson lived in England, where he was a dedicated member of early British natural history networks. He was an active early member of the Haggerstone Entomological Society (which later became the City of London Entomological and Natural History Society).

He emigrated to Melbourne, Victoria, in the late 1880s, immediately plunging into the booming natural history scene of the colony. Anderson joined the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria: a vibrant community of amateur and professional scientists who went on frequent weekend excursions into the dense bushlands surrounding Melbourne, such as the Dandenong Ranges, Healesville, and Frankston, to collect specimens.

Anderson became one of the club's premier lepidoptera experts, routinely presenting his new discoveries and meticulous insect drawings

He specialized heavily in microlepidoptera. These are an difficult diverse group of tiny moths that many collectors ignored because they require immense patience and magnifying lenses to study them. Anderson meticulously pinned, labeled, and kept detailed journals of these Victorian micro-moths. His collection was so scientifically valuable that it was eventually shipped to England and absorbed into the Lord Walsingham Collection. Today, Volume 8 of the historic Walsingham manuscripts that are held permanently at the Natural History Museum in London, consists entirely of the microlepidoptera specimen records sent by Ernest Anderson from Melbourne.

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(written 21 August 2026)