Henry James Stovin Pryer

[1][3] The couple had six children: Isabel Jane, Annette, Thomas Neremiah, William Burgess, Jessy Courtney and Henry James Stovin who was born on 10 June 1850 and baptised at Saint Paul's, Bunhill Row, Finsbury on 3 March 1851.

[4] Isabel Pryer appears on the 1851 England Census, taken on the night of 30 March 1851, as a widow looking after her six children (including 9 month old Henry) with a live-in nurse and cook.

[14] Siblings Isabel and William had also shown interest in science from a young age, so Pryer had a supportive family.

[15] In the same volume Pryer gives his detailed methodology for collecting and preserving insect specimens - Pryer favoured the "Continental system" with insects being set flat and high on a long pin to avoid damage and accommodate labels underneath as opposed to the English system (using short pins) which he felt was 'a decided mistake.

'[17] Pryer's butterfly collection included examples from all over Japan: he mentions studying specimens from Yokohama, Yezo [Ezo, northeast Honshu], Nagasaki, Tosa (southern Shikoku), Gifu Prefecture, Nikkō, Asama-yama (Mount Asama), Ohoyama, Tonosawa, Atami, Kanozan, Mount Fuji, Ontakisan (Mount Ontake), Yamato, Ogasawara, Ryukyu, possibly the Kuriles, Niigata, Ô-Yama, Chichibu, Usui-toge, Maibashi [Maebashi], Sonogi, Hachijo, Kanosan and Tokyo.

[18] In July 1873, via his sister Annette's husband Percy Wormald, Pryer communicated to the journal The Zoologist a report about his visit in March 1873 to see a dead giant squid that had been recovered by fishermen "off the coast of Kessarradzu, in Kadzuzar" [probably Kisarazu, Kazusa Province, now part of Chiba Prefecture].

Pryer also mentions that he had to light a cigar because by the time he visited the squid, which was being exhibited in a temple enclosure, the smell of 'bad fish' was very strong.

[23] In 1879, Pryer sent the Society a living male example of the Japanese serow Capricornis crispus, the first time the living species had been seen in the U.K.[24] The serow was described as suffering in confinement on its long voyage to England, losing weight, and being aggressive with a companion animal placed in its enclosure when it first arrived at the zoo, though it improved in health after some time.