Albert Stewart Meek

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Albert Stewart Meek (born October 26, 1871 in Bow, London , † October 1, 1943 in Bondi , New South Wales ) was a British naturalist and zoological collector of bird skins and insects. He was also a dealer in bird feathers. He was a close collaborator of Walter Rothschild and Ernst Hartert . Through his many years of collecting activity, he brought together one of the world's largest collections of bird hide and insects from the early 20th century for the Natural History Museum at Tring . In some publications he is mistakenly referred to as Alfred S. Meek .

Life

Meek was born the son of a natural history merchant in Bow, London . In 1894 he was hired by Walter Rothschild as a bird and insect collector for the newly opened Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum. Meek initially began collecting in England and shortly afterwards toured Australia , the Solomon Islands , New Guinea and Bougainville , where he discovered several new bird taxa, including the bougainville crow ( Corvus meeki ). 1904 he led an expedition to Choiseul , where he spent the last four copies of the now-extinct Choiseul Pigeon ( Microgoura meeki collected). Since the Choiseul islanders were decried as cannibals , Meek was accompanied by an armed escort. During an expedition in New Guinea in 1906, Meek shot the type specimen of the Queen Alexandra bird butterfly ( Ornithoptera alexandrae ), the largest known butterfly in the world.

Meek was also an expert on bird feathers from the Pacific region. In 1913, during a visit to the Papuan Islanders, he noticed that the feathers of more than 23 birds (especially birds of paradise ) were used for the middle part of a chief's headdress .

Meek's collection of bird skins and insects is one of the most outstanding exhibits at the Natural History Museum in London. Other parts of his collection, which Walter Rothschild had to sell in the 1930s, are kept in the American Museum of Natural History .

Dedication names

Several bird taxa have Meek's name in the species epithet , including the Solomon Pigeon ( Microgoura meeki ), the Solomon Lory ( Charmosyna meeki ), the Meek Woodpecker Parrot ( Micropsitta meeki ), the Bougainville crow ( Corvus meeki ), the Tagula bird ( Zosterops meeki ) Manus owl ( Ninox meeki ), the meekhoney eater ( Ptiloprora meekiana ), the Bougainville pygmy fish ( Ceyx meeki ) and the Louisiade blue-breasted pitta ( Erythropitta meeki ).

Works (selection)

  • Albert S. Meek, A Naturalist in Cannibal Land , 1913, Fischer Unwin, London

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shane Parker: Albert Meek . In: Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club . 88, 1967, p. 129.
  2. ^ Family Notices The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld .: 1933-1954). 7 October 1943.
  3. ^ Fur and Feathers

literature

  • Rothschild, Miriam 1983. Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, butterflies and history . Balaban, Philadelphia.
  • Rothschild, Walter, & Ernst Hartert. 1913. List of the collections of birds made by Albert S. Meek in the lower ranges of the Snow Mountains, on the Eilanden River, and on Mount Goliath during the years 1910 and 1911. Novitates Zoologicae 20: 473-527. Notes on Lepidoptera collected by Albert S. Meek in Irian Jaya during 1910 and 1911, including descriptions of localities
  • Barbara Mearns & Richard Mearns, The Bird Collectors , Academic Press, 1998, ISBN 0-12-487440-1

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Meek, Albert Stewart
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British naturalist and zoological collector of bird skins and insects
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Bow, London
DATE OF DEATH October 1, 1943
Place of death Bondi , New South Wales