FALCONER, HUGH (1808-1865), British palaeontologist and botanist, was born at Forres on Feb. 29, 1808. He studied at Aberdeen and at Edinburgh, where he took his M.D. in 1829. Proceeding to Calcutta in 1830 as assistant-surgeon on the Bengal establishment of the East India Company, he soon published his description of the fossil bones from Ava in the possession of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In 1831 he was appointed superintend ent of the botanic garden of Saharanpur. In 1834 he published a geological description of the Siwalik hills and subsequently brought to light a sub-tropical fossil fauna of unexampled extent and richness, including remains of Mastodon, the colossal rumi nant Sivatherium, and the enormous tortoise Colossoclielys Atlas. It was on his recommendation in 1834 that tea was introduced into India.
When illness required him to return to England in 1842, he began his Fauna Antigua Sivalensis, of which Part I. was issued in 1846, and 107 plates during the years 1846-49. He was elected F.R.S. in 1845, and in 1847 was appointed superintendent of the Calcutta botanical garden, and professor of botany in the medical college.
In 185o he published an important report on the teak forests of Tenasserim, and through his recommendation the cultivation of the cinchona bark was introduced into India. From 1855, he spent the remainder of his life in examining fossil species in England and on the Continent corresponding to those found in India, notably the species of mastodon, elephant and rhinoceros; he also described some new mammalia from the Purbeck strata, and he reported on the bone-caves of Sicily, Gibraltar, Gower and Brix ham. He died on Jan. 31, 1865.
Falconer's botanical notes, with 45o coloured drawings of Kashmir and Indian plants, were deposited in the library at Kew Gardens, and his Palaeontological Memoirs and Notes were edited, with a biographical sketch, by C. Murchison (1868) . See also Essays, de scriptive and biographical (1901) by his niece Lady Prestwich.