Samuel Stevens (naturalist)
Samuel Stevens (11 March 1817 – 29 August 1899) was a natural history agent in London.[1][2]
Stevens was a keen entomological collector for much of his life.[3] He ran a natural history agency from his shop at 24 Bloomsbury Street, London, from 1848 until 1867. Two of his earliest, and best known, clients were Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates, supporting their joint collecting expedition to the Amazon and then Wallace's journeys in the 'Malay Archipelago' by buying their specimens and displaying them to learned societies.[4]
He is remembered in the specific name of the Jamaican snail, Petitia stevensiana (now Fadyenia stevensiana), named by Edward Chitty in 1857 “in compliment to the naturalist’s universal friend, S. Stevens, Esq., Bloomsbury Street, London.”[5]