English naturalist known for his significant personal collections, especially of plants and insects. Born in Hillmorton, near Rugby, James Petiver and his brothers were educated at Rugby Free School. Their education was paid for by their maternal grandfather, their father having died while Petiver was young, but Petiver only attended the school for one year before embarking on an apprenticeship to a London apothecary in 1677. After this training he set up practice on White Cross Street, Aldersgate, where he was resident for the rest of his life. In the course of his training he had built up a small herbarium. This interest in plants was to develop into a broader appreciation of natural history, especially entomology and botany, though the collections he subsequently built up were mostly supplied by correspondents, Petiver not venturing further than the Midlands, Bristol and Cambridge in his lifetime, save for a trip to the Netherlands in 1711.
Entering into correspondence with the leading naturalists of the day, by the 1680s Petiver had earned a reputation as a fine botanist and entomologist. Sir Hans Sloane invited him to meetings of the Royal Society in 1693 and within two years he had been elected a Fellow. In 1700 he also received a boost in his main business, being appointed apothecary to the Charterhouse in 1700, and at this stage was growing quite wealthy (helped by his bachelor status).
Petiver was meanwhile accumulating a significant private museum of natural history specimens, including some 5000 dried plants, though he was lamentably bad at arranging and labelling his specimens, and did not keep them carefully. He published a catalogue of his collections in parts from 1695-1703, including descriptions and notes on collectors, and later privately printed several other lists and works on natural history collecting, such as Gazophylacium naturae et artis (1702-1709) and the periodical Monthly Miscellany. His Papilionum Britanniae icons (1717) was the first publication devoted exclusively to English butterflies. Petiver's vast correspondence from this time is held in the Sloane manuscripts collection at the British Library and fills nine volumes.
In 1711 Petiver travelled to the Netherlands on behalf of Hans Sloane for the auction of Paul Hermann's collections. On this trip he met Herman Boerhaave and other leading Dutch naturalists, and had the degree of doctor of medicine conferred upon him by the University of Leiden. Six years later he was taken seriously ill and no more travel was possible. He died the following year, in April 1718, at his home, bequeathing his entire estate to his sister, who sold the collections to Sloane.
Sources:
D.E. Allen, 2009, "Petiver, James (c.1665-1718)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn:
www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22041, accessed 28 November 2011
J. Britten and J.E. Dandy, 1958, The Sloane herbarium: 175-182.
