Guy Anstruther Knox Marshall

Who was Guy Anstruther Knox Marshall?

Sir Guy Anstruther Knox Marshall, was an Indian-born British entomologist and authority on Curculionidae.

He was the youngest of three children born to Colonel Charles Henry Tilson Marshall, a district judge, and Laura Frances Pollock, daughter of Sir Frederick Pollock, 1st Baronet and Chief Baron of the Exchequer. Both Guy's father and his uncle, Major-General George Frederick Leycester Marshall, were naturalists who had produced books on the birds and butterflies of India, Burma, and Ceylon.

Marshall was sent from India to a school in Margate where he started a butterfly collection. He transferred his attentions to beetles when he enrolled at Charterhouse. When he failed the Indian Civil Service entrance examination, his father shipped him off to Natal in South Africa to learn sheep farming. He ended up in Rhodesia, managing the Salisbury District and Estates Company and owning two farms, one managed by Swynnerton.

Marshall corresponded with the prominent Darwinian, Edward Bagnall Poulton, Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford University who had written The Colours of Animals. Poulton urged Marshall to study insect colours in mimicry and camouflage. Throughout this research project Marshall put together a collection of plant specimens from southern Africa. His findings were published as a joint paper in Transactions of the Entomological Society of London in 1902.