Robert Cyril Layton Perkins

Robert Cyril Layton Perkins (1866-1955) was a British entomologist, ornithologist and naturalist who studied natural history at Jesus College, Oxford. In 1891 the Royal Society commissioned him to survey the land fauna of the Hawaiian Islands, the first survey of its kind. He spent close to a decade there, and his findings - published from 1899 as Fauna Hawaiiensis - revealed for the first time the extraordinary biological diversity of the islands, work that later earned him the title "Father of Hawaiian Zoology". He went on to direct the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association's entomology department from 1904, working on early biological pest control, before ill health forced his retirement to Newton Abbot, Devon, in 1912. He was awarded the Linnean Society's gold medal in 1912 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1920.

Back in Devon, Perkins continued publishing on his Hawaiian research for another twenty years and turned his attention to British insects, particularly bees and sawflies. Natural History Museum specimen records (GBIF) name "Dr Robert Cyril Layton Perkins FRS" as the collector of moths at Hexworthy and Lustleigh, two Dartmoor townships close to Bovey Tracey, where he later died in 1955 - his retirement-era collecting grounds, on the moor's eastern doorstep.

Sources: Wikipedia, Royal Society biographical memoir, GBIF/NHMUK specimen record.