Ecology of Indonesian Papua Part One. Andrew J. Marshall
access); Armit collected some plants (Melbourne). The next season, Armit continued collecting in the Kabadi district (inland from Yule Island), penetrating into the foothills (and discovering, among other plants, Buddleja asiatica), and also in the Milne Bay region; and likewise in 1884 E. G. Edelfelt visited the Astrolabe Range and environs (plants, Melbourne) while J. Strachan, C. Stewart, and George Bel-ford (the last still early in a long New Guinea career, although he had already accompanied Armit and the Dentons)—again sponsored by leading newspapers in Australia—made a "gentlemen’s" trip to the Trans-Fly mainland north of Torres Strait (as well as offshore islands including Saibai), returning therein in 1885 and 1886 (plants, Melbourne).
British New Guinea (1884–1898)
While Britain in 1883 may have rebuffed annexation, in the following year it could no longer be avoided. At the famous "intergovernmental conference" of 1884–1885 in Berlin, western Melanesia was included along with Africa as part of a world program to delimit metropolitan "spheres of influence." Developing commercial and, finally, official interest thus propelled Germany into raising their flag in November 1884 over northeastern New Guinea (renamed Kaiser-Wilhelms-land), the newly named Bismarck Archipelago (and Sea), and the western Solomons (with much of Micronesia added in 1885). Partly to placate the Australian colonies, Britain almost simultaneously followed suit, Commodore Erskine on 6 November reading out the proclamation of British New Guinea—initially as a protectorate.
The first administrator of the new territory was Sir Peter Scratchley, who arrived in August 1885 but—after an energetic start—served but a few months, passing away near the end of the year. He did, however, lend considerable support (including provision of passage with him to New Guinea) to the first major exploring expedition, that of H. O. Forbes. Forbes and his team were active northeast of Port Moresby from their arrival until May the following year, with an attempt on Mt Victoria in the main Owen Stanley Range their primary goal. Though this was not successful, he spent (with one short break) a full wet season in the foothills between the Sogeri Plateau and the upper Iawarere River, collecting many animals and plants (BMNH, Melbourne, etc.). Twice he was joined by Chalmers and once by Scratchley. Unfortunately due to arguments—particularly at BMNH—many of Forbes’ plants remained unstudied until the early 1920s although the monocotyledons were worked up by H. N. Ridley within a few months of their receipt in London, the results appearing in print in 1886.
The 1880s also saw the continued formation of geographical societies—many, if not most, of them also advocates for colonial expansion and development. Some of the branches of the Geographical Society of Australasia were co-supporters (along with the Royal Geographical Society in London) of Forbes, but also in 1885 the Sydney branch organized its own expedition to the Fly and Strickland rivers. Its steam launch Bonito carried 12 scientists led by the zoologist Haacke; W. W. Froggatt collected insects (AM) while W. Bäuerlen collected several hundred plants (Melbourne). They were joined for a time by Carl Hartmann, a Queensland horticulturalist. In 1887 the Melbourne branch sponsored W. R. Cuthbertson and W. A. Sayer in their successful ascent of Mt Obree in the Owen Stanley Range—northeast of the Kemp Welch Basin in the present Rigo District—in the Owen Stanley Range (plants, Melbourne). There, Cuthbertson and Sayer overlapped with Hartmann, then on his second expedition—on the invitation of John Douglas, Scratchley’s successor as administrator—which unfortunately led to his death from fever (plants, Melbourne). Hartmann at this time also attempted to establish the first botanical garden in eastern New Guinea (at Konedobu, Port Moresby, later the site of a police barracks and, in time, other government offices).
In 1888 British New Guinea became a Crown Colony, and the energetic William Macgregor—previously in service in Fiji—was appointed as administrator (later Lt-Governor). Macgregor vigorously fostered natural history work but with a history of incidents during contacts with villagers made geographical exploration more a government monopoly. Under his direction—and sometimes his own efforts—most of the major mountains in the southeastern peninsula were climbed and as well deep interior penetration made there, up the Fly River, and along the hitherto poorly-known Gulf of Papua and present Oro Province coasts. Apart from Macgregor himself (Mt Victoria, 1889), party leaders included Belford, now in official service (Mt Yule, 1890), R. E. Guise (grandfather of Sir John Guise, first Governor-General of Papua New Guinea; Goropu Mountains including Mt Suckling, 1891), Armit (Mt Dayman, 1894) and A. C. English and Amadeo Giulianetti (Mt Albert Edward and Mt Scratchley, 1896–1897). Animals went along with ethnographic and other official collections to Brisbane (Queensland Museum, where C. W. de Vis studied the birds), while plants went initially to Melbourne (until von Mueller’s death in 1896) and then to Kew (for study by W. B. Hemsley), with some mosses going to V. F. Brotherus in Helsinki as well as (later) to H. N. Dixon (BMNH) and the liverworts to F. Stephani in Geneva.
Through these considerable efforts the mountain flora and fauna became much better known. On Mt Victoria it was first demonstrated that a true "alpine" flora existed. Previous efforts in the Vogelkop and the dry parts of the southeast led to hypotheses over Malesian affinities (Beccari) and Australian affinities (von Mueller) in the flora. In his 1889 study of the Mt Victoria flora, Mueller argued for a connection with temperate Australasia for montane plants and both therein and the Northern Hemisphere for high-montane and "alpine" plants, with links to the south better represented. Two years later—partly on the basis of his own extensive investigations in Malesia and New Guinea—the Berlin botanist and orientalist Otto Warburg, then an associate of Adolf Engler, presented a synthesis (further discussed below) for New Guinea phytogeography. But the majority of pronouncements on Papuan biogeography—from the time of Salomon Müller onwards—have been based on analyses of higher vertebrates (especially marsupials). Only in the latter part of the twentieth century did the picture with respect to plants become clearer.
Of independent naturalists in British New Guinea in the Macgregor years, Italians as well as British (and Australians) were the most conspicuous. The Italians, encouraged as before by Giacomo Doria (at Genoa), continued the tradition begun by d’Albertis and Beccari. In 1889 Lamberto Loria began the first of two expeditions to the Port Moresby region and other parts of Papua. After d’Albertis, he was the main early entomological collector in the region. Assisted by Giulianetti (see above), he spent long periods in the Sogeri and Meroka regions (to 1,300 m in the latter), the Rigo and Mekeo districts further distant from Port Moresby, as well as the coast of the gulf of Papua and Milne Bay islands (insects, crustaceans, vertebrates, etc., to Genoa; some plants to Florence). During this time, S. Giuseppe separately collected birds in the Gulf of Papua (Genoa). After Loria’s final departure, Giulianetti—as also Armit (in 1894) and, earlier, Belford—became a public servant, working for MacGregor as Government Agent for collection of natural history specimens, including birds (Brisbane) and plants (Kew) and, as already indicated, partly leading a major mountain expedition (during which he found the magnificent (and edible) highland screw-palm, Pandanus jiulianettii). Another officer (and fairly prolific writer), C. A. W. Monckton, collected at Kokoda and elsewhere, and made a remarkable crossing of the Owen Stanley Range into the Lakekamu Basin (BMNH; see also below).
From Australia, three further botanists came in the latter years of the Macgregor administration. Two were under official auspices: W. V. Fitzgerald (later active in Western Australia) in 1895, collecting particularly in Oro and Milne Bay Provinces (plants, Melbourne); and in 1898—at the close of Macgregor’s second term—F. M. Bailey, Queensland Government Botanist, undertook a tour with Lord Lamington (the then-Governor of the colony, whose surname today graces a notorious volcano in Oro Province as well as a popular small, chocolate-filled square cake topped with coconut flakes), also collecting and later reporting on his plants (Brisbane). Until 1915 Bailey would act as "consultant botanist" to British New Guinea (and Papua), laying the foundations of one of the key holdings in Australia of New Guinean plants (now fully databased and accessible online). The founder of the Anglican Church in New Guinea, the Rev. Copland King, collected from the time of his arrival, principally ferns (Manila, Sydney); these were described by E. B. Copeland.
British non-official plant collectors were during this time represented by the "plant hunters" David Burke (1887–1888, for the Veitch nursery firm in Chelsea, greater London) and Wilhelm Micholitz (1894 and again in 1898, for the Sander firm at St Albans). In the latter year he was at South Cape and in the Milne Bay Islands (finding, among other orchids, Dendrobium atroviolaceum,