thumb|200px|Edward Hamilton Aitken (1851-1909)|right

Edward Hamilton Aitken (16 August 1851 – 11 April 1909) was a British civil servant in India, better known for his humorist writings on natural history in India and as a founding member of the Bombay Natural History Society. He was well known to Anglo-Indians by the pen-name of Eha.

Early life

Eha was born at Satara in the Bombay Presidency on 16 August 1851. His father was the Rev. James Aitken, missionary of the Free Church of Scotland. His mother was a sister of the Rev. Daniel Edward, a missionary to the Jews at Breslau for some fifty years. He was educated by his father in India. His higher education was obtained at Bombay and Pune. He passed M.A. and B.A. of Bombay University, first on the list, and won the Homejee Cursetjee prize with a poem in 1880. From 1870 to 1876, he taught Latin at the Deccan College in Pune. He also knew Greek and was known to be able to read the Greek Testament without the aid of a dictionary. He grew up in India, and it was only later in life that he visited England for the first time, and he found the weather of Edinburgh severe. and they had two sons and three daughters. Their daughter - Jesse Helen, married James Hood Wilson Lownie (1887-1961), and their son Ralph became a colonial judge and author of Auld Reekie. Their grandson is the author Andrew James Hamilton Lownie.

Natural history

He explored the jungles on the hills near Vihar<!--Vihar lake--> around Bombay and wrote a book called The Naturalist on the Prowl. His writing style was accurate and at the same time amusing to his readers. He studied most of his subjects in life and was very restricted in his collecting.

He refused to be depressed by life in India. "I am only an exile," he remarks, "endeavouring to work a successful existence in Dustypore, and not to let my environment shape me as a pudding takes the shape of its mould, but to make it tributary to my own happiness." He therefore urged his readers to cultivate a hobby.

He wrote:

thumb|Illustration of the habits of [[Suncus murinus]]

He worked at the museum of the Bombay Natural History Society, an organization that he founded and published many of his notes in the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society. He was also the first joint-editor of that journal, secretary to the Insect division of the BNHS and president for some time.

In one famous case a subordinate of EHA working in the Salt department in Kanara came to his bungalow with a snake on his shoulder. Eha wrote that the man had seen two snakes fighting and said 'I smashed at them with a stick-one got away, but I killed this one and have brought it to you-What is it ?' 'It is a King cobra, and you have not killed it' replied Eha. The snake was put in a crate and sent to the BNHS with the note 'It may not survive the journey. If it does not you will know it by the smell. If there be no smell be careful.' The snake survived for two years in the BNHS.

He was a proponent of the study of living birds as opposed to the bird collectors of his time. He wrote in his Birds of Bombay

In a similar manner he studied the life-histories of butterflies unlike most butterfly collectors of the time.

thumb|Scooties [[Striped panchax|Haplochilus lineatus]]

He maintained an aquarium and made Sunday-morning expeditions to the ravines at the back of Malabar Hill to search for mosquito larvae to feed its inmates. Mr. Aitken investigated the capabilities for the destruction of larvae, of a small surface-feeding fish with an ivory-white spot on the top of its head, which he had found at Vihar in the stream below the bund. It took him some time to identify these particular fishes (Haplochilus lineatus) which he called "Scooties" for their lightning rapidity of their movements. With these he stocked the ornamental fountains of Bombay to keep them from becoming breeding-grounds for mosquitoes, and they are now largely used throughout India for this very purpose.

T. R. Bell, a naturalist friend, writing of him after his death said

:He was a good man in every sense of the word; a strongly religious man, a pleasant companion, broad minded, exceedingly tolerant of the weaknesses of others, gentle and lovable and a rare example of a man without a single enemy.

Eha once wrote:

He kept many pets at home and Surgeon-General Bannerman noted in his preface to Eha's books that he often found himself having to go on unpleasant trips to the primeval forests of Cumballa Hill to look for mosquito larvae to feed the fish. In appearance Eha has been described as a long, thin, erect, bearded man...with a typically Scots face lit up with the humorous twinkle one came to know so well. A photograph taken in 1902 shows a fringe of hair encircling a bald head which is commented upon by Bannerman as "a condition which Kemp's Equatorial Hair Douche had not been able to prevent".

Despite the popular reception for his book, a contemporary review in the Pall Mall Gazette of his book Tribes on my frontier termed his work as being entirely based on the kind of humour established by Phil Robinson. The review said:

Writings

thumb|Illustration of Indian waterfowl hunting technique from The Tribes on My Frontier

His books include

  • An Indian Naturalist's Foreign Policy (1883)
  • Behind the Bungalow (1889)
  • The Naturalist on the Prowl (1894)
  • The Five Windows of the Soul (1898)
  • The Common Birds of Bombay (1900)
  • The Tribes on my Frontier (1904)
  • Gazetteer Of The Province Of Sindh (1907)

After returning to Edinburgh, he wrote a series of articles on birdlife in the Strand Magazine.

Notes

References

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  • Preface to Eha's Concerning animals and other matters by Surgeon-general William Burney Bannerman I.M.S., C.S.I.
  • Preface to Eha's Common birds of Bombay by W. T. Loke
  • Aitken, E. H. (1886): A List of the Bombay butterflies in the Society's collection, with notes. — J. Bombay nat. Hist. Soc. 1: 126–135.
  • Aitken, E. H. (1887): A List of the Butterflies of the Bombay Presidency. — J. Bombay nat. Hist. Soc. 2: 35–44.
  • Common Birds of Bombay
  • Common birds of India. 3rd edition with preface by Salim Ali and Loke Wan Tho
  • Behind the Bungalow
  • Tribes on my Frontier
  • Concerning Animals and Other Matters
  • A Naturalist on the Prowl