Thomas Reid Davys Bell

Thomas Reid Davys Bell (2 May 1863 – 24 June 1948) was a lepidopterist, naturalist and forest officer who worked in India.

[1] He went to London for tuitions at Wren and Gurney to enter the Indian Civil Services but failed.

He later wrote entrance exams to Sandhurst and Woolwich and passed but decided not to join the army.

He was also in touch with Edward Hamilton Aitken who was in the salt and excise department and James Davidson, collector of the district and along with these keen naturalists he began to study the Lepidoptera.

A series on the common butterflies of India was started in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society by L.C.H.

[6] He reared many lepidoptera specimens from larvae collected in the field and published on a variety of topics including a volume (1937) on the Sphingidae (having reared nearly 80 Indian species) in The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma in collaboration with Major F. B. Scott (who was in Assam).

He worked on the grasses of the North Kanara region with L. J. Sedgwick, the collection now at St. Xavier's College in Bombay.

He joined a timber business at Sawanthwadi along with a partner who left him with significant financial losses.