Albert Stewart Meek (26 October 1871 – 1 October 1943) was an English

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

collector and naturalist.

Biography

Meek was born on 26 October 1871 in

Bow, London Bow () is an area of East London within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is primarily a built-up and mostly residential area and is east of Charing Cross. It was in the traditional county of Middlesex but became part of the County o ...

, the son of a merchant in natural history. In 1893 he travelled to Australia and spent some time at George Barnard’s cattle station at Coomooboolaroo, the only place in Australia where the now-extinct paradise parrot had occurred. It is not known if Meek ever saw this species. In 1894 he began collecting bird and insect specimens for

Lionel Walter Rothschild Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937) was a British banker, politician, zoologist and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was present ...

; first in England, then in Australia. Later, in the Pacific region (in particular the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

and Bougainville, he was the first naturalist who observed the birdlife). Meek also collected reptiles for the

Natural History Museum A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, including the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...

and

paratype In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). O ...

of the venomous Woodlark Island snake (''Toxicocalamus longissimus'') from

Woodlark Island Woodlark Island, known to its inhabitants simply as Woodlark or Muyua, is the main island of the Woodlark Islands archipelago, located in Milne Bay Province and the Solomon Sea, Papua New Guinea. Although no formal census has been conducted sinc ...

, off the east coast of

British New Guinea The Territory of Papua comprised the southeastern quarter of the island of New Guinea from 1883 to 1975. In 1883, the Government of Queensland annexed this territory for the British Empire. The United Kingdom Government refused to ratify the a ...

, and described by George Albert Boulenger in 1896, as the type-species of the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

Toxicocalamus ''Toxicocalamus'' is a genus of snakes in the family Elapidae. The genus is endemic to New Guinea. Description Most species of ''Toxicocalamus'' are relatively small, the largest specimen known being the holotype of the recently described ''T ...

''. A third specimen collected by Meek, reported to have come from

Fergusson Island Fergusson Island is the largest island of the D'Entrecasteaux Islands, in Papua New Guinea. It has an area of , and mostly consists of mountainous regions, covered by rain forests. There are three large volcanoes on the island. Fergusson Isla ...

in the d'Entrecasteaux Islands also off the east coast of British New Guinea, is also believed to have originated from Woodlark Island. Today this rare snake is still only known from twelve specimens in four museums. Meek became a dealer in feathers and

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s. In 1904 he travelled to Choiseul, where he collected the last specimens of the Choiseul crested pigeon. But, due to the horrible reputation of the islanders as

cannibal Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, bo ...

s, he was protected by an armed escort to bring the skins to his vessel. On an expedition in New Guinea in 1906 he discovered and shot the first specimen of the

Queen Alexandra's birdwing ''Ornithoptera alexandrae'', the Queen Alexandra's birdwing, is the largest species of butterfly in the world, with females reaching wingspans slightly in excess of 25 cm to 28 cm (9.8 inches to 11 inches). This birdwing is restricted to the ...

(''Ornithoptera alexandrae''), the largest butterfly in the world. While on a visit to New Guinea he estimated that the headdress of a chief needed the feathers of more than 23 killed birds (''e.g.'',

birds of paradise The birds-of-paradise are members of the family Paradisaeidae of the order Passeriformes. The majority of species are found in eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and eastern Australia. The family has 44 species in 17 genera. The members of ...

), just to create the middle part. His collection of bird skins and insects is held by the Natural History Museum in London. Specimens from Meek's collections can also be seen in the American Museum of Natural History. Meek died on 1 October 1943 at his home in Bondi, Sydney. He had two sons and two daughters: Wilfred, Victor, Gladys and Marie.

Tribute

Species named after Meek include eight full bird species: * Choiseul crested pigeon (''Migrogoura meeki''), * Meek's lorikeet (''Charmosyna meeki''), * Meek's pygmy parrot (''Micropsitta meeki''), *

Bougainville crow The Bougainville crow (''Corvus meeki'') is a species of bird in the crow family, Corvidae. It is found in on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea and the neighbouring Shortland Islands in the Solomon Islands. Within its range it is ...

(''Corvus meeki''), * white-throated white-eye (''Zosterops meeki''), * yellowish-streaked honeyeater (''Ptiloprora meekiana''), *

North Solomons dwarf kingfisher The North Solomons dwarf kingfisher (''Ceyx meeki''), is a species of bird in the family Alcedinidae that is endemic to the west and central Solomon Islands. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest A forest is ...

(''Ceyx meeki'') and the * Manus hawk owl (''Ninox meeki''). Also several butterfly and moth species were named after Meek, including *'' Graphium meeki'', *''

Gnathothlibus meeki ''Gnathothlibus meeki'' is a moth of the family Sphingidae. It is known from Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, ...

'', *'' Delias meeki'', *'' Angonyx meeki'', *'' Macroglossum meeki'', *'' Oxycanus meeki'', *'' Bindahara meeki'', *'' Acupicta meeki'', and *'' Udara meeki''. In 1896, Oldfield Thomas described ''Emballonura beccarii meeki'', a subspecies of the Beccari's sheath-tailed bat of which Meek had collected the type series on

Kiriwina Kiriwina is the largest of the Trobriand Islands, with an area of 290.5 km². It is part of the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. Most of the 12,000 people who live in the Trobriands live on Kiriwina. The Kilivila language, also known ...

Trobriand Islands The Trobriand Islands are a archipelago of coral atolls off the east coast of New Guinea. They are part of the nation of Papua New Guinea and are in Milne Bay Province. Most of the population of 12,000 indigenous inhabitants live on the main isla ...

.Oldfield Thomas: ''On Mammals collected by Mr. Albert Meek on Woodlark Island and on Kiriwina in the Trobriand Group''. In:

Novitates Zoologicae ''Novitates Zoologicae: A Journal of Zoology in Connection With the Tring Museum'' was a British scientific journal devoted to systematic zoology. It was edited by Lionel Walter Rothschild Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, ...

Vol. III (1896). p 527 Despite the considerable collections of reptiles made by Meek, including the

and

of the rare elapid snake ''Toxicocalamus longissimus'', only one reptile was named in his honour, a treesnake ''Dendrophis meeki'', by G.A.Boulenger in 1895, this species now being a synonym of ''Dendrelaphis gastrostictus''.

Literature by and about Meek

*Rothschild, M. 1983. Dear Lord Rothschild: ''Birds, butterflies and history''. Balaban, Philadelphia. xx + 398 pp. Mentions Walter Rothschild's collectors in New Guinea, including

William Doherty William Doherty (May 15, 1857 in Cincinnati – May 25, 1901 in Nairobi) was an American entomologist who specialised in Lepidoptera and later also collected birds for the Natural History Museum at Tring. He died of dysentery while in Nairobi. ...

, Albert S. Meek, Ernst Mayr, etc. *Rothschild, W., and E. 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.''

20:473–527. Notes on Lepidoptera collected by Albert S. Meek in Irian Jaya during 1910 and 1911, including descriptions of localities *Barbara and Richard Mearns, ''The Bird Collectors'', Academic Press, 1998, *Albert S. Meek, ''A Naturalist in Cannibal Land'', 1913, Fischer Unwin, London

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Meek, Albert 1871 births 1943 deaths English naturalists English entomologists English ornithologists People from Bow, London