His mother, Mary Jane Daniel, was born at Newark, New Jersey, U.S.A., of English parents who returned to England a few years later.

He spent some time at St Edmunds High School, Birmingham, where the headmaster, William Bywater Grove, was a well-known mycologist.

He bought Robert Bentley Todd's Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology when he was about seventeen years old, and this had George Newport's detailed article on the 'Insecta'.

After spending two years under Bridge at Birmingham, he received the 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship in 1905 which helped him go to Cambridge, where he joined Christ's College under A. E. Shipley.

He repeatedly wrote to Rothamsted Experimental Station, urging the authorities to set up an entomology department which they did and in 1918 with him as Chief Entomologist.