Walter Samuel Millard

Walter Samuel Millard (1864–1952) was a British entrepreneur and naturalist who was honorary secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society, editor of the Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society from 1906 to 1920, co-author (with Ethelbert Blatter) of the classic, Some Beautiful Indian Trees, and the driving force behind the Mammal Survey of the Indian subcontinent conducted by the society between 1911 and 1923.

Millard, the seventh son of Rev. J.H. Millard, was born in Huntingdon, England in 1864. He came out to Bombay at age 20 to assist in the wine business of Herbert (Musgrave) Phipson, then Honorary Secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and the editor of its journal. Joining the Society in 1893, he was made assistant editor of the Journal. Upon Phipson's retirement in 1906, Millard became editor and remained so until 1920.

During the years of Phipson's editorship, the Journal of BNHS had emerged as the premier natural history journal in Asia. Although other excellent Asian journals in the field were being published during Millard's editorial tenure, the Journal of BNHS remained the only one with both scholarly and general interest articles. During this time the Society began to publish serial articles from the Journal in book form. One of the best received such books was Stuart Baker's Indian Ducks and their Allies (1908).

Millard's main avocation was gardening, especially the cultivation of flowering trees. He is credited with introducing the Burmese Cassia renigera, the Pterocarpus indicus, and the South American Gliricidia maculata to the city of Bombay. Upon his suggestion, Fr. Ethelbert Blatter, SJ, Principal and Professor of Botany at St Xavier's College, Bombay, wrote the series Palms of India for the Journal. A few years later Blatter and Millard coauthored the series Some Beautiful Indian Trees, resulting in a book of the same name, which has since become a classic, and remains in print.Salim Ali credited his initiation into ornithology as a young boy to Millard, who helped identify a yellow-throated sparrow he had shot.

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