Albert Stewart Meek

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 Vögelbälgen and insects. He was also a distributor of bird feathers. He was a close associate of Lionel Walter Rothschild and Ernst Hartert. Through his years of collecting activity he amassed one of the largest Vogelbalg and insect collections of the early 20th century for the Natural History Museum at Tring. In some publications, he is referred to erroneously as Alfred S. Meek.

Life

Meek was the son of a merchant of natural history objects in London's Bow to the world. In 1894 he was hired by Lionel Walter Rothschild as bird and insect collector for the newly opened Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum. Meek first began to gather in England and traveled a short time later Australia, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and Bougainville, where he discovered several new Vogeltaxa, including the Bougainvillekrähe (Corvus meeki ). 1904 led him on an expedition to Choiseul, where he collected the last four copies of the now-extinct Salomon Dove ( Microgoura meeki ). Since the Choiseul islanders were decried as cannibals, Meek was accompanied by an armed escort. During an expedition to New Guinea in 1906, Meek killed as the type locality of the Queen Alexandra Bird moth ( Ornithoptera alexandrae ), the largest known Tagfalters the world.

Meek was also an expert on bird feathers from the Pacific region. In 1913, he remarked during a visit to the Papua islanders that the springs were over 23 killed birds (especially birds of paradise ) is used only for the central part of headdress of a chief.

Meeks collection of skins and insects is one of the most outstanding exhibits of the Natural History Museum in London. Other parts of his collection, which was forced to sell Lionel Walter Rothschild in the 1930s, are preserved in the American Museum of Natural History.

Dedikationsnamen

Several Vogeltaxa lead Meeks name in the epithet, including the Solomon Dove ( Microgoura meeki ), the Salomonenlori ( Charmosyna meeki ), the Meek Spechtpapagei ( Micropsitta meeki ), the Bougainvillekrähe (Corvus meeki ), the white-throated White-eye ( Zosterops meeki ), the Manuskauz ( Ninox meeki ) and the Meekhonigfresser ( Ptiloprora meekiana )

Works (selection)

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