Edgar Leopold Layard CMG FZS MBOU, (23 July 1824 – 1 January 1900) was a British diplomat and a naturalist mainly interested in ornithology and to a lesser extent the molluscs.

He studied the zoology of these places and established natural history museums in Sri Lanka and South Africa.

[3] Layard attributed his early interest in natural history to the lack of siblings close to his age.

Now 21 he heard from a cousin of a vacancy in Ceylon for someone with mechanical skills to work on machinery in a coffee estate.

He married Barbara Anne, daughter of Reverend John Calthrop on 18 October 1848 and travelled to Ceylon with his wife, now skilled in art, so as to assist him in his zoological studies.

I used carefully to bind up his letters as they came, & I often now, when I see them, think with a sad heart of the bright intelligence and vast ornithological knowledge that sank with him, in shadows, in the grave.

[1] Layard spent ten years in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where he studied the local fauna with Robert Templeton.

[1] In 1854, he went to the Cape Colony as a civil servant working in the service of the governor George Edward Grey (1812–1898).

[4] In December 1855 Charles Darwin wrote to Layard with a description of his research investigating "the variation & origin of species", and requested assistance in obtaining specimens of domesticated animals and birds, particularly pigeons.

In an expedition from October 1856 to March 1857, Layard visited Mauritius, Mombasa, Zanzibar, Madagascar, and ports on the southern coast of South Africa.

Edgar Layard administered the government of Fiji from 1874 to 1875 and was honorary British Consul at Nouméa, New Caledonia from 1876.

Aside from the South African material, the bird collections they made from their 'home base' of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands are the most scientifically important.

A species of lizard endemic to Sri Lanka, Nessia layardi (originally placed in the genus Acontias) was named after him by Edward Frederick Kelaart.