Douglas Alexander Spalding (14 July 1841 – 1877) was a British biologist who studied animal behaviour and worked in the home of Viscount Amberley.
[1] Not long after his birth, his parents moved to Aberdeenshire, Scotland where they had previously lived.
But when he contracted tuberculosis, he travelled in Europe in hopes of finding a cure, and in Avignon met John Stuart Mill and through him Viscount Amberley (son of the former British prime minister Lord John Russell, by then 1st Earl Russell).
Spalding carried out some experiments on animal behaviour, and discovered the phenomenon now known as imprinting, later rediscovered by Oskar Heinroth, then studied at length and popularised by Konrad Lorenz.
B. S. Haldane reprinted Spalding's essay "On Instinct" in 1954 to clarify the history of the subject.