By Wong Kah Wei
The earliest publications of birds of the Malay Archipelago found in NUS Libraries’ collection is a journal article written by Alfred R. Wallace. The hard copy of the article On the Pigeons of the Malay Peninsula was bound together with other journal articles on birds in a bound volume titled Birds Miscellaneous in our Rare Book collection. The article was published in the journal Ibis, No.4, October 1865 and is also accessible online.
Along with the Pigeons article, the bound volume of Birds Miscellaneous also includes another article written by Wallace titled On the Raptorial Birds of the Malay Archipelago. This article was also published in Ibis but later on January 1868.
Alfred Russel Wallace was known as a joint discoverer with Charles Darwin (Armstrong, 2019). Comparisons are bound to occur between these two eminent naturalists. However, there did not seem to be any indication of animosity between them as Wallace wrote about Darwin with warmth and fondness in the first chapter (Chapter XXV) of Volume 2 of his memoirs, My Life: A Record of Events & Opinions. Armstrong considered Wallace as a more interesting character, researching and writing in greater number of fields.
Wallace’s wide areas of research interests is seen in his written works in our library collections. Wallace was born in 1853. Due to the financial difficulties in his family, he apprenticed as a surveyor to his older brother, William. It was during this time, around 1836-1837, that he began to be interested in natural history, specifically botany. While he was teaching basic technical skills in a private school in Leicester, he was exposed to good libraries, “digesting several works which were to feature importantly in his subsequent activities” (Smith, 2019). One of the books he had read while at Leicester and which he wanted to investigate further was Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a new treatise on the subject of the transmutation—evolution—of life. To pursue his interest, the most obvious approach was to travel to the tropics where there was a diversity of species to investigate how transmutation of species occurred (Smith, 2019).
Wallace was one of the first naturalists “to make a systematic study of the behaviour of organisms, particularly birds” (Armstrong, 2019). He wrote how he “valued almost as much as the birds themselves was the knowledge of their habits” (Armstrong, 2019). An example of his obvious fascination and vivid description of birds is reflected in his observation of the great bird of paradise in his book The Malay Archipelago : the Land of the Orang-utan, and the Bird of Paradise; a Narrative of Travel, with Studies of Man and Nature. Wallace described the “dancing” of the male birds waving “exquisite plumes keeping them in continual vibration” with raised up wings and stretched up necks, flying from “branch to branch in excitement” (Wallace, 1869).
As for his research on pigeons in the Malay Archipelago recorded in his 1865 Ibis article, Wallace probably observed these pigeons while he was travelling and collecting specimens around the Malay Archipelago between 1854 and 1862 (Armstrong, 2019). Wallace admitted to the difficulty in classifying pigeons and suggested that this can “probably only be satisfactorily effected by an examination of the anatomy of all the genera”, proposing to group them in the three families of Treronidae (Fruit pigeons), Columbidae (True pigeons or doves), Gouridae (Ground pigeons) (Wallace, 1865). He also provided a list of the Malayan species of pigeons which he “endeavoured to make as complete as possible” (Wallace, 1865). He included notes on localities in which he had observed the species himself. For easy reference to aid other ornithologists to find out “what species have yet to be ascertained to inhabit each island”, Wallace provided two tables showing the distribution of Malayan pigeons and also the distribution of genera. Wallace also stated the limits of the Malay Archipelago as delineated in his paper On the Physical Geography of the Malay Archipelago.
Philegoebas Tristigmata – Plate from “On the Pigeons from the Malay Archipelago” Source: Wallace, A. R., Meyer, A. B., Beebe, C. W., Oberholser, H. C., & Wetmore, A. (1865). Birds Miscellaneous. publisher not identified.
If you are interested to read other written works on birds by Wallace in our library’s collection, have a look here.
The earliest publication on birds in the Malay Archipelago available in our library is just one of the many rare books NUS Libraries has added to our collections throughout the century. These gems allow us to appreciate the curiosity, courage and the adventurous spirit of our early researchers which should inspire us to explore beyond the boundaries of knowledge, pushing the frontiers of discovery.
References
Armstrong, P. (2019). Alfred Russel Wallace. Reaktion Books Ltd.
Smith, C. H., Costa, J. T., & Collard, D. A. (2019). An Alfred Russel Wallace companion. The University of Chicago Press.
Wallace, A. R. (1863). On the physical geography of the Malay Archipelago. The Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London, 33, 217–234.
Wallace, A. R. (1865). On the pigeons of the Malay Archipelago. Ibis, 7(4), 365-400.
Wallace, A.R. (1869). The Malay Archipelago: The land of the orang-Utan, and the bird of paradise. New York, Harper & Brothers
Wallace, A. R., Meyer, A. B., Beebe, C. W., Oberholser, H. C., & Wetmore, A. (1865). Birds miscellaneous.
Wallace, A. R. (1905). My life: a record of events and opinions. Chapman & Hall, Ld.
