A Delias, Anthropologist and Goodenough Island.
May 4, 2016 8:23:01 GMT
deliasfanatic, mygos, and 7 more like this
Post by nomad on May 4, 2016 8:23:01 GMT
A Delias, Anthropologist and Goodenough Island.
Today much of the exotic material coming from dealers especially those in Asia is graded to perfection but specimens usually have very little data, perhaps the Island or Country and if your lucky the date but often no altitude or exact locality. Why is this, are they hiding these facts to keep their sources a secret or do they believe that most collectors do not care as long as they have an A1 flawless specimen or is it the fact that they do not request that information from their collectors in the field. It has been said by some that without that important data these specimens are scientifically worthless.
Those specimens that do have good data are much more valuable such as this old specimen of Delias ennia saturata from the Oxford Museum University collections. Many of the data labels in the museum's collection have been transcribed and placed at the specimen's side for easy viewing. The Delias ennia saturata data label shows the locality, altitude and date. An equally important and fascinating aspect of the data labels such this, is the field collectors name which can add much to our interest and knowledge by further research.
The Oxford Delias ennia saturata specimen was caught by D. Jenness at Bwaidoga, beneath 500 feet in the south-east of the remote island of Goodenough between December 1911 and August 1912. Goodenough Island is part of the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. Delias ennia may not be a particularly rare species but its subspecies saturata is probably absent from most collections. Since the days of Jenness and Meek few collectors have visited Goodenough Island. Jenness was not the first to collect butterflies on Goodenough Island. A.S. Meek had previously collected here and had taken both sexes of the new subspecies of D. ennia in December 1896. Rothschild had named the new ennia subspecies saturata in his ' Notes and descriptions of New Delias' that was published in the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History; Zoology, Botany, and geology, No 85 1915.
The male specimen of Delias ennia saturata (Rothschild 1915) collected by Diamond Jenness.
One then would assume that D. Jenness was either a naturalist or perhaps a missionary but he was in fact an Anthropologist. Diamond Jenness (1886-1969) was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He visited Goodenough Island to study Anthropology, staying with his sister and her husband, the Reverend A. Ballantyre at their mission station at Bwaidoga near the coast at Mud Bay. Jenness had previously been on a scholarship to Oxford University and had agreed to do fieldwork on the Island and to collect artifacts for the famous and wealthy English Anthropologist and Archaeologist Pitt Rivers. He had also been asked to collect insects on Goodenough for the Oxford Museum by Professor E. B. Poulton. Later Jenness would be invited to join several Arctic expeditions where he became an authority on the native Eskimos peoples publishing books and many papers on that subject. Canada became the new home of Jenness and he was a pioneer of Anthropology in his new country.
Full biography of Diamond Jenness details can be found here onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1971.73.1.02a00190/pdf
Diamond Jenness was not content to stay at Bwaidoga during his stay on Goodenough Island. He circumnavigated the island in canoes for two weeks with the natives. He then climbed with native guides up into the mountains shooting tree kangaroos and after a day long climb beyond the mountains forested zone, he reached the grassy and rock strewn summit area of Mount Madawaa, (Madawana, Madawha, and various other names) Jenness seems only to have made an extensive butterfly collection at Bwaidoga which he presented to the Oxford Museum on his return there during 1912.
Soon after arriving at Bwaidoga, Jenness has contacted Malaria which had already killed two of his sister's small children and would later kill her missionary husband Andrew. Jenness suffered much from the terrain during his expeditions, cuts caused by the rough vegetation developed into terrible tropical ulcers but he soldiered on when he was able.
Even the New Guinea butterfly expert Michael Parsons sometimes gets it wrong when it comes to the history part of his chosen field. In his paper about butterfly farming which makes very interesting reading, Parsons gets into a muddle when it comes to the actual butterfly history. Take a look at page 7, the Demand Begins at this link www.troplep.org/TLR/3supplement1/pdf001.pdf Albert Stewart Meek becomes Albert Stanley and according to Parsons, Diamond Jenness is the Reverend and the missionary on Goodenough instead of the visiting Anthropologist. It was his brother-in-law the Reverend Andrew Ballantyre who was the missionary. To be fair to Parsons, today knowledge is perhaps more easily gained at the touch of a button than it was in 1992 when he was writing his article.
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Today much of the exotic material coming from dealers especially those in Asia is graded to perfection but specimens usually have very little data, perhaps the Island or Country and if your lucky the date but often no altitude or exact locality. Why is this, are they hiding these facts to keep their sources a secret or do they believe that most collectors do not care as long as they have an A1 flawless specimen or is it the fact that they do not request that information from their collectors in the field. It has been said by some that without that important data these specimens are scientifically worthless.
Those specimens that do have good data are much more valuable such as this old specimen of Delias ennia saturata from the Oxford Museum University collections. Many of the data labels in the museum's collection have been transcribed and placed at the specimen's side for easy viewing. The Delias ennia saturata data label shows the locality, altitude and date. An equally important and fascinating aspect of the data labels such this, is the field collectors name which can add much to our interest and knowledge by further research.
The Oxford Delias ennia saturata specimen was caught by D. Jenness at Bwaidoga, beneath 500 feet in the south-east of the remote island of Goodenough between December 1911 and August 1912. Goodenough Island is part of the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. Delias ennia may not be a particularly rare species but its subspecies saturata is probably absent from most collections. Since the days of Jenness and Meek few collectors have visited Goodenough Island. Jenness was not the first to collect butterflies on Goodenough Island. A.S. Meek had previously collected here and had taken both sexes of the new subspecies of D. ennia in December 1896. Rothschild had named the new ennia subspecies saturata in his ' Notes and descriptions of New Delias' that was published in the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History; Zoology, Botany, and geology, No 85 1915.
The male specimen of Delias ennia saturata (Rothschild 1915) collected by Diamond Jenness.
One then would assume that D. Jenness was either a naturalist or perhaps a missionary but he was in fact an Anthropologist. Diamond Jenness (1886-1969) was born in Wellington, New Zealand. He visited Goodenough Island to study Anthropology, staying with his sister and her husband, the Reverend A. Ballantyre at their mission station at Bwaidoga near the coast at Mud Bay. Jenness had previously been on a scholarship to Oxford University and had agreed to do fieldwork on the Island and to collect artifacts for the famous and wealthy English Anthropologist and Archaeologist Pitt Rivers. He had also been asked to collect insects on Goodenough for the Oxford Museum by Professor E. B. Poulton. Later Jenness would be invited to join several Arctic expeditions where he became an authority on the native Eskimos peoples publishing books and many papers on that subject. Canada became the new home of Jenness and he was a pioneer of Anthropology in his new country.
Full biography of Diamond Jenness details can be found here onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1971.73.1.02a00190/pdf
Diamond Jenness was not content to stay at Bwaidoga during his stay on Goodenough Island. He circumnavigated the island in canoes for two weeks with the natives. He then climbed with native guides up into the mountains shooting tree kangaroos and after a day long climb beyond the mountains forested zone, he reached the grassy and rock strewn summit area of Mount Madawaa, (Madawana, Madawha, and various other names) Jenness seems only to have made an extensive butterfly collection at Bwaidoga which he presented to the Oxford Museum on his return there during 1912.
Soon after arriving at Bwaidoga, Jenness has contacted Malaria which had already killed two of his sister's small children and would later kill her missionary husband Andrew. Jenness suffered much from the terrain during his expeditions, cuts caused by the rough vegetation developed into terrible tropical ulcers but he soldiered on when he was able.
Even the New Guinea butterfly expert Michael Parsons sometimes gets it wrong when it comes to the history part of his chosen field. In his paper about butterfly farming which makes very interesting reading, Parsons gets into a muddle when it comes to the actual butterfly history. Take a look at page 7, the Demand Begins at this link www.troplep.org/TLR/3supplement1/pdf001.pdf Albert Stewart Meek becomes Albert Stanley and according to Parsons, Diamond Jenness is the Reverend and the missionary on Goodenough instead of the visiting Anthropologist. It was his brother-in-law the Reverend Andrew Ballantyre who was the missionary. To be fair to Parsons, today knowledge is perhaps more easily gained at the touch of a button than it was in 1992 when he was writing his article.
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One via New Zealand?
