Antwerp Edgar Pratt

Background

Pratt was born on 6 March 1852 on the Isle of Wight in England to Charles, a grocer, and Ann Pratt.

Career

Three mammals and two reptiles are named for Pratt. He had two elder siblings, Florence and Vienna. In the same year he visited Tibet and China.

In China his activities were treated with suspicion and notices were posted warning locals of assisting him.

These employees were harassed by the locals and his German assistant had to retreat from his work. In 1892 he published an account of his journey "to the snows of Tibet through China".

This book is thought to show that Pratt did not actually get to Tibet but he only got close enough to meet the missionaries who had been ejected from the country. Incidentally Pratt"s book is thought to be a source for the work of Vladimir Nabokov.

He died in 1924 in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, aged 71.

In the course of thirty years of almost continuous journeyings in both hemispheres, it has been my fortune to stray far from the beaten tracks and to know something of the spell and mystery of the earth’s solitudes. My work in quest of additions to the great natural history collections, both public and private, of England, and to a less extent of France, has lead me to the Rocky Mountains, the Amazons, the Republic of Columbia, the Yangtze gorges and the snows of Tibet. lieutenant is safe to say that none of these has aroused my interest and curiosity in so great a degree as the scene of my latest and my next expedition, the still almost unexplored Papua, second largest of the world’s islands and almost the last to guard its secrets from the geographer, the naturalist and the anthropologist.

Agricultural Engineer Pratt, 1906.

Introduction to ‘Two Years among New Guinea Cannibals’. Pratt"s roundleaf bat Hipposiderous pratti, 1891

Pratt"s vole (Alternate the Sichuan Red-backed Vole) Eothenomys chinensis, 1891

Pratt"s crabapple Malus prattii 1895

Pratt"s snail eater Dipsas pratti, 1897

Pratt"s rocket frog Colostethus pratti, 1899

Sphenomorphus pratti, 1903

Pratt"s tree frog Litoria pratti, 1911

Green acouchi Myoprocta pratti, 1913

Spiny Ceram rat Rattus feliceus, 1920

Buru opalescent birdwing butterfly Troides prattorum, 1922

Delias pratti, 1922.

Achievements

• He was a member of the Royal Geographical Society and in 1891 he received the Gill Memorial Award for the encouragement of geographical research in early career researchers who have shown great potential.