Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell

Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell (20 June 1877 – 8 November 1918), the biologist, physician and author, was the only son of the architect Herbert Spurrell and Harriet Rebecca Blaxland. He was a nephew of the archaeologist Flaxman Charles John Spurrell and a member of the Spurrell family of Norfolk.

A student of Gustav Mann, Spurrell went on to discover and classify fish, reptiles and frogs from the Gold Coast and South America, and was a Fellow of the Zoological Society. Among the species named after him are Spurrell's Free-tailed Bat and Spurrell's Woolly Bat.

During the First World War he served as a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps; he died of pneumonia at Alexandria, Egypt, on 8 November 1918.

He was also the author of a number of books, both scientific and fictional:


 * The Commonwealth of Cells: Some popular essays on human physiology, 1901, Bailliere, Tindall & Cox
 * Out of the Past, 1903, Greening
 * At Sunrise: A story of the Beltane, 1904, Greening
 * Patriotism: A biological study, 1911, George Bell & Sons
 * Modern Man and his Forerunners: A short study of the human species living and extinct, 1917, George Bell & Sons