Fraser, Louis

Louis Fraser was a British zoologist and collector. Fraser had worked as an assistant in the Indian Museum at Calcutta around 1888. He worked for fourteen years at the museum of the Zoological Society of London. He worked with the anatomist Richard Owen on studies of the emu and rhea. He participated in the Niger expedition of 1841 as the African Civilisation Society's scientist. Upon his return he became in charge of Lord Derby's collection at Knowsley Hall. In 1846 he was sent by Lord Derby to collect in north Africa. In 1848 he became conservator at Knowsley Hall. He wrote Zoologica Typica, or figures of the new and rare animals and birds in the collection of the Zoological Society of London, published in 1849. In 1850, Fraser was appointed Consul of Quidah, Dahomey (now Benin), West Africa. Around 1857-1859 he collected birds and mammals in Ecuador for Philip Lutley Sclater of the Zoological Society of London, and the year after in California. Upon his return to London, he opened a shop in Regent's Park, London, selling exotic birds. The last years of his life he spent in America. Fraser wrote a Catalogue of the Knowsley Collections (1850) and described several new species including the Derbyan parakeet Psittacula derbiana named after his employer.[2] A number of species and subspecies have been named in his honour, including Fraser's anole (Anolis fraseri ), Fraser's ground snake (Liophis epinephelus fraseri ), a centipede snake (Tantilla fraseri ),[5] Fraser's eagle-owl (Bubo poensis), Fraser's warbler (Myiothlypis fraseri ),[6] and Fraser's musk shrew (Crocidura poensis)