Post by nomad on Jun 9, 2013 9:20:42 GMT -8
This may seem a long post but it really is a brief synopsis of A. F. R Wollaston's exploration of New Guinea and his important butterfly discoveries that he made there.
Alexander Frederick Richmond " Sandy " Wollaston [ 1875-1930] was an English Explorer and Naturalist who made important collections of lepidoptera. He had a passion for natural history from an early age which would lead to a life long study of Entomology, botany and Ornithology. During his travels to different parts of the world, Sandy Wollaston would collect specimens for the British Museum and the Rothschild private museum at Tring. He qualified as a medical doctor, a profession he disliked intensely, to gain access to major expeditions and with his skills as an all round naturalist Sandy became a good candidate for such enterprises. After a number of adventures in Africa Sandy joined the expedition of the British Ornithologists Union [ 1909 to 1911 ] to Dutch New Guinea. Walter Goodfellow was the leader of the expedition and the objective of his large party was to reach the Snow Mountains of the central ranges by travelling up one of the rivers from the south coast. Sandy was appointed the expedition doctor and was also to be in charge of the Entomological and botanical collecting parties. The BOU had originally planned to use the Oetakwa [ Utakwa ] River to reach the Snow Mountains but because a Dutch military expedition had the same intention and, perhaps as a result of colonial competition, the British were directed to the much less promising Mimika River. Here the BOU expedition began to flounder in the lowland swamps and rainforest and there was much death and illness in the party. Even the butterflies were scarce, Sandy wrote in desperation " The myth that a tropical forest was where birds of wonderful plumage flashed from tree to tree and brilliant butterflies flitted among exotic blooms was born in a globetrotters hothouse". You may travel for many miles in this jungle and never see a flower or a butterfly" Somehow the entire BOU lepidoptera collection was destroyed except for 600 specimens of Heterocera [ Moths ]. Finally the expedition made it to some lowland foothill and Sandy had a tantalizing view of the Snow Mountains still 40 miles away and quite unreachable.
A.F.R. Wollaston in New Guinea during his expedition of 1912/1913.
The map Wollaston made of his route to the Snow Mountains and showing his collecting camps.
Undaunted by his experiences, Sandy was back in New Guinea during 1912 and 1913 with his own expedition, which was largely financed by Walter Rothschild. The goal of the expedition was to climb the highest known peak in the Snow mountains now known to be the 16000 feet [ 4884 meter] Carstensz pyramid and to make zoological collections at the camps set up along the way. Sandy hired the English Zoologist Cecil Boden Kloss [ 1877-1949 ] who was curator at the museum in Kuala Lumpur in Malaya. He also took with him a strong party of Borneo dayaks and a large Dutch military escort under Lieutenant Van der Water. This time travelling up the Oetakwa [ Utakwa ] and Setakwa Rivers, the Wollaston party would succeed where others had failed. Ironically the Rothschild collector Alfred Stewart Meek had been a guest of the large Dutch Military expedition on the Oetakwa River which had prevented Sandy Wollaston and the BOU from using this much better route to the Snow Mountains. Meek's highest point reached was 2500 feet and here he set up camp and collected up to 4000 feet. Meek found that the moths here were numerous and he made a fine collection but the butterflies were disappointing. The Wollaston party would also use the same camp at Observation Point [ see map ] and Sandy made excellent use of the house that Meek had built with a roof of palm leaves it was still watertight after two years.
At his different camps and especially those that he made high up on Carstensz, Sandy and his party collected 811 species of lepidoptera including 210 species of butterflies of which 40 species and 16 subspecies were new and of the moths, 212 species and around 20 subspecies were also new to science. There were no new Papilionidae and the Ornithoptera were rarely seen. Sandy caught a single female of O. tithonus at his base camp at sea level on the Oetakwa River. Rothschild mentioned that the female O. tithonus sent to him by Wollaston, was different from those he had examined from Kapaur in the Onin Peninsula. Today the O. tithonus Oetakwa River population is regarded as some authors as belonging to the subspecies makikoae but others regard it as a geographical race of the nominate. Sandy also took a number of the then rare beautiful montane Graphuim weiskei, only the males were captured the females remained elusive. In his account of the lepidoptera of the Wollaston expedition published in 1915, Walter Rothschild took the opportunity to describe two new subspecies of Graphuim weiskei: goodenovii from a single male collected on Goodenough Island by A.S Meek in 1913 and stresemanni from the Mansuela range in Ceram where it was first found by the German naturalist Erwin Streseman [ 1889- 1972 ]. Streseman's Graphuim is now regarded as a good species. Among the new butterflies discovered by the Wollaston party were four new Satyrinae and a female of the exquisite Taenaris [ Morphotenaris ] schoenbergi wollastoni which is now considered to be synonymous with the nominate race. There were 12 new Lycaenidae and 19 new skippers of which there was some amazing new forms. The fine collection of moths included some very beautiful species that included a giant Ghost moth Aenetus [Oenetus] wollastoni and the stunning Craspedosis wollastoni from the Geometridae family.
Perhaps the most outstanding lepidoptera captured on the Wollaston expedition and what pleased Walter Rothschild the most, were the butterflies of the Pieridae genus Delias. Rothschild was most surprised at the wonderful new Delias butterflies discovered by Sandy and Cecil Kloss especially because he had sent A.S. Meek to that part of New Guinea. Although Alfred Meek had found the butterfly collecting on the upper Oetakwa poor, a year later in 1911 he joined the Dutch Eilanden River expedition. Meek reached the upper Eilanden and set up his collecting camp at 6500 feet on Mount Goliath but soon found his stay in the mountains moss forests, dank and miserable, when it was not raining he was usually enveloped in a cold mist which made the trees always dripping wet. One can only wonder what conditions the Wollaston party found at their camps high on Carstensz. A. S. Meek spent three months on Mount Goliath from January to March but the butterflies were again scarce except for the Delias butterflies which were glorious. Meek and his native collectors endured many hardships on Mount Goliath but the Delias butterflies helped to brighten Meek's stay there. He wrote enthusiastically " They are white butterflies as regards the top side of the wings but on the underside the wings show the most beautiful colours : in some instances black and grey in others black and red- all very peculiar and very beautiful." " The males and the females of this genus are in some instances very much alike, except that the females are darker in colouring than the males." On Mount Goliath Meek discovered seven new Delias and obtained a good series of each species included the elusive females. Meek had much experience in hunting Delias especially in the Owen Stanley Range of the then British New Guinea.
The Wollaston party collected 18 species of Delias of which four were new but what excited Walter Rothschild the most, was that three of the newly discovered species were quite unlike anything that had been captured before. Rothschild thought the new Delias Wollastoni a marvelous insect unlike any known Delias, a rare compliment from the taxonomist who had described so many beautiful butterflies and he named this special discovery in Sandy's honour. Another new species was named Delias inexpectata. Both of these new Delias and the very striking Delias klossi were described by Rothschild from single male specimens that were captured high on the slopes of Carstensz in Feb/March 1913. All three remain rare butterflies in collections today and the female of the nominate D. klossi remains to be discovered a 100 years after the Wollaston expedition! The fourth new discovery Delias carstensziana was more numerous but again only the males were taken.
During the last days in January 1912 Sandy and a few of his party reached the Carstenz glacier at 14,886 feet in atrocious weather and they could progress no further. Although Wollaston was a good climber the expedition surprisingly lacked suitable climbing equipment and climbing partners. Sandy was bitterly disappointed and travelling the river on his return journey Sandy's canoe capsized and he was nearly drowned. Sandy mentions that much worse than his bodily distress was the fact that everything was lost that had been in the canoe including his notes and diaries, the map, many instruments belonging to RGS, Valuable plants and seeds from the high mountains, two expensive cameras and all his personal property. Thankfully for science his entire large lepidoptera collection was in another canoe.
Below a beautiful plate from the Rothschild account of the lepidoptera of the expedition with the Delias and other butterflies and moths discovered by the Wollaston party. Also depicting the new Graphuim stresemanni.
Below some of the beautiful new moths discovered by Wollaston.
Below a plate from Novitates Zoological showing the female specimen of Taenaris [Morphotenaris] schoenbergi wollastoni.
Below. A advertisement for the lepidoptera book of the BOU and Wollaston expeditions. Also with two advertisements by two of the greatest insect dealers and Entomologists of their day.
The following books can be found on Wollaston and his expeditions and which I have in my collection.
Pygmies and Papuans: The Stone Age today in Dutch New Guinea. Account of the 1909/1911 BOU expedition. A. F. R. Wollaston 1912.
Lepidoptera of the BOU and Wollaston expedition to Snow Mountains of New Guinea. Walter Rothschild 1915.
Expedition to Dutch New Guinea. A.F.R. Wollaston. Good but brief account of the wollaston expedition published in the Royal Geographical Society's Journal 1914. With a map and rare photos.
Letter's and Diaries of A.F.R. Wollaston selected by his wife Mary. A rare book but one of my favourites. 1933.
Race to the Snow 1907-1936. Enthralling account of the early exploration of New Guinea with a good acount of the BOU and Wollaston expeditions with many rarely seen photos 2001.
My father Sandy by Nicholas Wollaston . Absorbing biography by the son of a father he never knew. Another favourite work. 2003.
Rare photographs taken by C. Kloss during the Wollaston expedition.
A.F.R Wollaston Timeline
1875. Born at Clifton Bristol, the son of a schoolmaster
1893. Goes to King's College Cambridge.
1896-1897. Travels on foot through Lapland.
1901. Joins N.C. Rothschild on a collecting expedition to the Sudan.
1903. Attains a medical degree in London as a physician.
1904. Another collecting expedition to the Sudan with Rothschild. Later that year would do a mini whirlwind tour of the far East collecting bugs for N.C. Rothschild visiting New Britain, the north coast New Guinea [ one week] Java and then Japan.
1906. Joins the major British Museum collecting expedition to Ruwenzori Mountains in Central Africa. Wollaston makes a large lepidoptera and insect collection.
1909-1911. The BOU expedition to New Guinea.
1912-1913. The Wollaston expedition to New Guinea.
1914. Wollaston is putting together another expedition to New Guinea but the war intervenes.
1915-1919. service with the army and navy
1921. Joins the first Mount Everest expedition with George Mallory. Wollaston is the expedition doctor and naturalist, makes a good collection of insects.
1923. Marries Mary Meinertzhagan the daughter of a very wealthy banker. On his extended honeymoon visits the unexplored Sierra Nevada in Colombia.
1925. Becomes a tutor at King's college Cambridge. Very successful and well liked by his students.
1930. After surviving all those expeditions with many dangers, Sandy and a accompanying police officer are shot dead in his college rooms by a demented student.
Alexander Frederick Richmond " Sandy " Wollaston [ 1875-1930] was an English Explorer and Naturalist who made important collections of lepidoptera. He had a passion for natural history from an early age which would lead to a life long study of Entomology, botany and Ornithology. During his travels to different parts of the world, Sandy Wollaston would collect specimens for the British Museum and the Rothschild private museum at Tring. He qualified as a medical doctor, a profession he disliked intensely, to gain access to major expeditions and with his skills as an all round naturalist Sandy became a good candidate for such enterprises. After a number of adventures in Africa Sandy joined the expedition of the British Ornithologists Union [ 1909 to 1911 ] to Dutch New Guinea. Walter Goodfellow was the leader of the expedition and the objective of his large party was to reach the Snow Mountains of the central ranges by travelling up one of the rivers from the south coast. Sandy was appointed the expedition doctor and was also to be in charge of the Entomological and botanical collecting parties. The BOU had originally planned to use the Oetakwa [ Utakwa ] River to reach the Snow Mountains but because a Dutch military expedition had the same intention and, perhaps as a result of colonial competition, the British were directed to the much less promising Mimika River. Here the BOU expedition began to flounder in the lowland swamps and rainforest and there was much death and illness in the party. Even the butterflies were scarce, Sandy wrote in desperation " The myth that a tropical forest was where birds of wonderful plumage flashed from tree to tree and brilliant butterflies flitted among exotic blooms was born in a globetrotters hothouse". You may travel for many miles in this jungle and never see a flower or a butterfly" Somehow the entire BOU lepidoptera collection was destroyed except for 600 specimens of Heterocera [ Moths ]. Finally the expedition made it to some lowland foothill and Sandy had a tantalizing view of the Snow Mountains still 40 miles away and quite unreachable.
A.F.R. Wollaston in New Guinea during his expedition of 1912/1913.
The map Wollaston made of his route to the Snow Mountains and showing his collecting camps.
Undaunted by his experiences, Sandy was back in New Guinea during 1912 and 1913 with his own expedition, which was largely financed by Walter Rothschild. The goal of the expedition was to climb the highest known peak in the Snow mountains now known to be the 16000 feet [ 4884 meter] Carstensz pyramid and to make zoological collections at the camps set up along the way. Sandy hired the English Zoologist Cecil Boden Kloss [ 1877-1949 ] who was curator at the museum in Kuala Lumpur in Malaya. He also took with him a strong party of Borneo dayaks and a large Dutch military escort under Lieutenant Van der Water. This time travelling up the Oetakwa [ Utakwa ] and Setakwa Rivers, the Wollaston party would succeed where others had failed. Ironically the Rothschild collector Alfred Stewart Meek had been a guest of the large Dutch Military expedition on the Oetakwa River which had prevented Sandy Wollaston and the BOU from using this much better route to the Snow Mountains. Meek's highest point reached was 2500 feet and here he set up camp and collected up to 4000 feet. Meek found that the moths here were numerous and he made a fine collection but the butterflies were disappointing. The Wollaston party would also use the same camp at Observation Point [ see map ] and Sandy made excellent use of the house that Meek had built with a roof of palm leaves it was still watertight after two years.
At his different camps and especially those that he made high up on Carstensz, Sandy and his party collected 811 species of lepidoptera including 210 species of butterflies of which 40 species and 16 subspecies were new and of the moths, 212 species and around 20 subspecies were also new to science. There were no new Papilionidae and the Ornithoptera were rarely seen. Sandy caught a single female of O. tithonus at his base camp at sea level on the Oetakwa River. Rothschild mentioned that the female O. tithonus sent to him by Wollaston, was different from those he had examined from Kapaur in the Onin Peninsula. Today the O. tithonus Oetakwa River population is regarded as some authors as belonging to the subspecies makikoae but others regard it as a geographical race of the nominate. Sandy also took a number of the then rare beautiful montane Graphuim weiskei, only the males were captured the females remained elusive. In his account of the lepidoptera of the Wollaston expedition published in 1915, Walter Rothschild took the opportunity to describe two new subspecies of Graphuim weiskei: goodenovii from a single male collected on Goodenough Island by A.S Meek in 1913 and stresemanni from the Mansuela range in Ceram where it was first found by the German naturalist Erwin Streseman [ 1889- 1972 ]. Streseman's Graphuim is now regarded as a good species. Among the new butterflies discovered by the Wollaston party were four new Satyrinae and a female of the exquisite Taenaris [ Morphotenaris ] schoenbergi wollastoni which is now considered to be synonymous with the nominate race. There were 12 new Lycaenidae and 19 new skippers of which there was some amazing new forms. The fine collection of moths included some very beautiful species that included a giant Ghost moth Aenetus [Oenetus] wollastoni and the stunning Craspedosis wollastoni from the Geometridae family.
Perhaps the most outstanding lepidoptera captured on the Wollaston expedition and what pleased Walter Rothschild the most, were the butterflies of the Pieridae genus Delias. Rothschild was most surprised at the wonderful new Delias butterflies discovered by Sandy and Cecil Kloss especially because he had sent A.S. Meek to that part of New Guinea. Although Alfred Meek had found the butterfly collecting on the upper Oetakwa poor, a year later in 1911 he joined the Dutch Eilanden River expedition. Meek reached the upper Eilanden and set up his collecting camp at 6500 feet on Mount Goliath but soon found his stay in the mountains moss forests, dank and miserable, when it was not raining he was usually enveloped in a cold mist which made the trees always dripping wet. One can only wonder what conditions the Wollaston party found at their camps high on Carstensz. A. S. Meek spent three months on Mount Goliath from January to March but the butterflies were again scarce except for the Delias butterflies which were glorious. Meek and his native collectors endured many hardships on Mount Goliath but the Delias butterflies helped to brighten Meek's stay there. He wrote enthusiastically " They are white butterflies as regards the top side of the wings but on the underside the wings show the most beautiful colours : in some instances black and grey in others black and red- all very peculiar and very beautiful." " The males and the females of this genus are in some instances very much alike, except that the females are darker in colouring than the males." On Mount Goliath Meek discovered seven new Delias and obtained a good series of each species included the elusive females. Meek had much experience in hunting Delias especially in the Owen Stanley Range of the then British New Guinea.
The Wollaston party collected 18 species of Delias of which four were new but what excited Walter Rothschild the most, was that three of the newly discovered species were quite unlike anything that had been captured before. Rothschild thought the new Delias Wollastoni a marvelous insect unlike any known Delias, a rare compliment from the taxonomist who had described so many beautiful butterflies and he named this special discovery in Sandy's honour. Another new species was named Delias inexpectata. Both of these new Delias and the very striking Delias klossi were described by Rothschild from single male specimens that were captured high on the slopes of Carstensz in Feb/March 1913. All three remain rare butterflies in collections today and the female of the nominate D. klossi remains to be discovered a 100 years after the Wollaston expedition! The fourth new discovery Delias carstensziana was more numerous but again only the males were taken.
During the last days in January 1912 Sandy and a few of his party reached the Carstenz glacier at 14,886 feet in atrocious weather and they could progress no further. Although Wollaston was a good climber the expedition surprisingly lacked suitable climbing equipment and climbing partners. Sandy was bitterly disappointed and travelling the river on his return journey Sandy's canoe capsized and he was nearly drowned. Sandy mentions that much worse than his bodily distress was the fact that everything was lost that had been in the canoe including his notes and diaries, the map, many instruments belonging to RGS, Valuable plants and seeds from the high mountains, two expensive cameras and all his personal property. Thankfully for science his entire large lepidoptera collection was in another canoe.
Below a beautiful plate from the Rothschild account of the lepidoptera of the expedition with the Delias and other butterflies and moths discovered by the Wollaston party. Also depicting the new Graphuim stresemanni.
Below some of the beautiful new moths discovered by Wollaston.
Below a plate from Novitates Zoological showing the female specimen of Taenaris [Morphotenaris] schoenbergi wollastoni.
Below. A advertisement for the lepidoptera book of the BOU and Wollaston expeditions. Also with two advertisements by two of the greatest insect dealers and Entomologists of their day.
The following books can be found on Wollaston and his expeditions and which I have in my collection.
Pygmies and Papuans: The Stone Age today in Dutch New Guinea. Account of the 1909/1911 BOU expedition. A. F. R. Wollaston 1912.
Lepidoptera of the BOU and Wollaston expedition to Snow Mountains of New Guinea. Walter Rothschild 1915.
Expedition to Dutch New Guinea. A.F.R. Wollaston. Good but brief account of the wollaston expedition published in the Royal Geographical Society's Journal 1914. With a map and rare photos.
Letter's and Diaries of A.F.R. Wollaston selected by his wife Mary. A rare book but one of my favourites. 1933.
Race to the Snow 1907-1936. Enthralling account of the early exploration of New Guinea with a good acount of the BOU and Wollaston expeditions with many rarely seen photos 2001.
My father Sandy by Nicholas Wollaston . Absorbing biography by the son of a father he never knew. Another favourite work. 2003.
Rare photographs taken by C. Kloss during the Wollaston expedition.
A.F.R Wollaston Timeline
1875. Born at Clifton Bristol, the son of a schoolmaster
1893. Goes to King's College Cambridge.
1896-1897. Travels on foot through Lapland.
1901. Joins N.C. Rothschild on a collecting expedition to the Sudan.
1903. Attains a medical degree in London as a physician.
1904. Another collecting expedition to the Sudan with Rothschild. Later that year would do a mini whirlwind tour of the far East collecting bugs for N.C. Rothschild visiting New Britain, the north coast New Guinea [ one week] Java and then Japan.
1906. Joins the major British Museum collecting expedition to Ruwenzori Mountains in Central Africa. Wollaston makes a large lepidoptera and insect collection.
1909-1911. The BOU expedition to New Guinea.
1912-1913. The Wollaston expedition to New Guinea.
1914. Wollaston is putting together another expedition to New Guinea but the war intervenes.
1915-1919. service with the army and navy
1921. Joins the first Mount Everest expedition with George Mallory. Wollaston is the expedition doctor and naturalist, makes a good collection of insects.
1923. Marries Mary Meinertzhagan the daughter of a very wealthy banker. On his extended honeymoon visits the unexplored Sierra Nevada in Colombia.
1925. Becomes a tutor at King's college Cambridge. Very successful and well liked by his students.
1930. After surviving all those expeditions with many dangers, Sandy and a accompanying police officer are shot dead in his college rooms by a demented student.
