Richard Henry Beddome

Colonel Richard Henry Beddome (11 May 1830 – 23 February 1911) was a British military officer and naturalist in India, who became chief conservator of the Madras Forest Department.

He was educated at Charterhouse School and trained for the legal profession, but preferred to join the East India Company at the age of 18 and joined the 42nd Madras Native Infantry as a cadet at Jabalpur.

[1] He entered the Army, obtaining a direct cadetship in 1848 in the East India Company's service, and sent to India was posted to the 42nd Madras Native Infantry[2] He was with that regiment at Jabalpur in 1856, serving as quartermaster and interpreter of the regiment, and from there he went to Secunderabad.

[1] In 1857, he was selected on account of his devotion to botany and natural history as an assistant to Dr. Hugh Cleghorn, the first conservator of the newly formed Forest Department of the Madras Presidency.

[7][8] This is a complete list of his papers on Mollusca: Descriptions of some new Operculated Land-shells from Southern India and Ceylon, 1S75.

Descriptions of Labyrinthus cuclausus and Neocyclotus Belli, n.spp., from Colombia, 1908 and in conjunction with H. H. Godwin-Austen: New species of Cyclophorus and a Spiraculum from the Khasi and Naga Hills, Assam.