Félix Biet

Félix Biet, MEP was a French Catholic prelate who served as the Apostolic Vicar of Tibet from 1878 to 1901. He was a member of the Paris [Foreign Missions Society] and also a naturalist.

Life

Biet was born in 1838. He was ordained as a priest in 1864. He was next sent to Tatsienlu in Tibet as a missionary and he became the Bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of Thibet, now Diocese of Kangding, in 1898. Félix Biet collected butterflies for Charles [Oberthür (entomologist)|Charles Oberthür] who dedicated three new species to him. Alphonse Milne-Edwards described the Chinese mountain cat and the black snub-nosed monkey,, the latter collected and sent by Jean-André Soulié. The Biet's laughingthrush a Chinese endemic species was another discovery, named by Émile Oustalet in 1897. Those natural history collections from Tibet and China are in the National [Museum of Natural History (France)|National Museum of Natural History] in Paris.
He was succeeded by Pierre-Philippe Giraudeau.