Albert Brydges Farn (9 October 1841 – 1921) was a British amateur entomologist,[1] chiefly remembered nowadays for a letter he wrote on 1878 to Charles Darwin describing industrial melanism in the annulet moth (Charissa obscurata) and suggesting natural selection as the process involved in pale forms getting rarer.
Though he began medical training he appears to have given it up on inheriting a large legacy, and devoted himself to pleasure.
In 1912 he moved to Doward Cottage, at Ganarew near Monmouth, largely to study the comma butterfly, which was at that time rare in England.
He had married and had a son and daughter but the marriage failed and he later lived with a common-law wife.
In 1880 he revised and extended The Insect Hunter's Companion,[7] and in 1890 he was elected a fellow of the Entomological Society.