Albert Stewart Meek
Albert Stewart Meek (26 October 1871 – 1 October 1943) was an English bird collector and naturalist. Biography Meek was born on 26 October 1871 in Bow, London, 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; first in England, then in Australia. Later, in the Pacific region (in particular the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and Bougainville, he was the first naturalist who observed the birdlife). Meek also collected reptiles for the Natural History Museum in London, including the holotype and paratype of the venomous Woodlark Island snake (Toxicocalamus longissimus) from Woodlark Island, off the east coast of British New Guinea, and described by George Albert Boulenger in 1896, as the type-species of the genus Toxicocalamus. A third specimen collected by Meek, reported to have come from Fergusson Island in the d'Entrecasteaux Islands also off the east coast of British New Guinea, is also believed to have originated from