Samuel Stevens (naturalist)

Samuel left the auction company in 1848 and started his own natural history agency from his shop at 24 Bloomsbury Street, London which ran until 1867 when he sold it to Edmond Thomas Higgins.

Stevens was an agent who sponsored specimen collection and two of his best known collectors were Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates.

He supported their joint collecting expedition to the Amazon and then Wallace's journeys in the Malay Archipelago by buying their specimens, displaying them to learned societies[2] and selling them to collectors.

[3] Their sales included the collections of 40000 insects made by Adrian Hardy Haworth, orchids, and the menagerie of Lord Derby.

After 1876 he retired to live at Loanda, Beulah Hill, Upper Norwood taking an interest in his insect collections, fishing, and water-colour painting.