Woodbine Parish

Sir Woodbine Parish KCH (14 September 1796, London – 16 August 1882, St. Leonards, Sussex) was a British diplomat, traveller and scientist.

The son of Woodbine Parish, of Bawburgh Old Hall, Norfolk, a major in the Light Horse Volunteers, and educated at Eton College, he took up his first diplomatic post in 1814, becoming involved in events immediately following the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.

He was commissioned as Consul General at Buenos Aires on 10 October 1823 and then promoted to Chargé d'affaires on 24 May 1825 on a salary of £1500.

In this capacity, he signed the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation with Argentina on 2 February 1825, accompanying also official recognition by Great Britain of Argentine independence.

In 1839 he published Buenos Ayres and the Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, an account of the geology of the Buenos Aires and Río de la Plata region and his findings of mammalian fossils, presenting Megatherium bones which were assembled and exhibited in the Natural History Museum, London.