Onin) Peninsula, Etna Bay, Oeta (or Uta), and Najeju (south coast). The Indonesian official (mantri) Anta from Bogor collected on the Digul in 1941 while with Wentholt (see below). J. J. van der Starre collected insects at Kaimana (southswest) in 1941 (Leiden).
PLANTS
In Dutch New Guinea, in 1920–1921 H. J. Lam—followed in 1926 by W. M. Docters van Leeuwen—made substantial plant collections on their respective expeditions (see above), Lam reaching the summit of Mt Doorman. Otherwise, new botanical activity in the Dutch districts was relatively limited, though the writing up of earlier collections continued. Among the few other contributors were some primarily engaged in zoological work (see above), notably Mayr in the southern Arfak Mts and Cyclops Mts in 1928–1929 (Berlin, Bogor, Harvard), and the Steins in 1931 (Berlin, Bogor). In the early 1930s both Cheeseman and Stüber (see above) collected some plants, Cheeseman in Australian as well as Dutch territory (BMNH, Kew). Stüber focused particularly on orchids for commerce, finding among many others the "Sepik Blue," Dendrobium lasianthera J.J.Sm. (1932), while Cheeseman obtained, among others, mosses, ferns and grasses.
In Australian Papua, collecting early resumed with a visit in 1918 by the newly appointed Queensland Government Botanist C. T. White (who was also consultant botanist to the territory, in succession to Bailey), on invitation by Lt Governor Murray (Smith, his semi-independent senior civil servant and nemesis (see above), being away in Europe) and taking advantage of vacation leave. Several hundred numbers were collected (Brisbane, BMNH), all from the then-Central Division, and a report and collection list published.
White was relatively soon followed in both Papua and the Mandated Territory by the chief forestry officer for the Commonwealth of Australia, C. E. Lane-Poole (who would some forty years later open the main buildings of the Forestry School at Bulolo). In 1922–1924, as part of a forest assessment survey (see below), Lane-Poole collected extensively in areas with relatively easy access, yielding some hundreds of numbers (Brisbane, Kew). His results were the first of any significance in the former German territory since 1914, but would be the last under official auspices in both territories for most of the remaining years between World War I and World War II.
In 1925–1926 Brass (see Archbold Expeditions, above), like White a Queenslander, also came to Papua, but under private sponsorship. His patron was C. S. Sargent—director since 1872 of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. Thus began an association over some three decades of that institution with New Guinea. Brass collected extensively in the Gulf, Eastern, and Central Divisions, in the latter reaching the Owen Stanley Range watershed. 1,165 numbers were obtained (Harvard Herbaria). A second expedition, planned for 1929, unfortunately came to naught because of Sargent’s death; but in that year White reported in the Arnold Arboretum’s Journal on the majority of Brass’s collections.
Later individual collectors included two later-famous British anthropologists. One, Gregory Bateson, a son of the geneticist William Bateson, author of Naven and other books, and once Margaret Mead’s husband, collected in 1931 in the Baining areas of New Britain and also in the Sepik basin (Kew). Another, Beatrice Blackwood, collected in 1936–1938 in the upper Watut Valley (Morobe) and, in 1937, when excluded from the Watut, along the south coast of New Britain including Kandrian and Arawe Islands (Kew). Also paying visits were a British gentleman-traveler, A. H. Batten Pooll (1940, Central Division; collections, Sydney); and the Japanese botanists R. Kanehira and S. Hatusima collecting in 1937 in Morobe and the Bismarck Archipelago and in 1940 in the Vogelkop Peninsula and from Nabire inland to Dalman in western New Guinea, the latter the site of a copal or dammar (Agathis labilliardieri) gum enterprise (collections, FU, BO and Harvard).
The visit by the two Japanese in 1937 was hurried, limited to the schedule of a cruise ship which took in Kavieng, Rabaul, and Salamaua; a swift return flight from nearby Lae enabled a quick visit to Wau. Collections were accordingly relatively few but their results were soon published. Their 1940 collection was, with more than 2,800 numbers, rather more extensive, and gave rise to a considerable series of papers (unfortunately never completed), with the most substantial coverage for the Anggi Lakes after Gibbs. Appointments to the Botanical Gardens at Bogor under Takenoshin Nakai (director in 1943–1945, during World War II) certainly facilitated their research.
But—save for Brass from 1933 with Archbold—all these efforts would be far outdone by three indefatigable plantsmen: the British/Malayan plantation manager and orchidophile C. E. Carr and the American missionary couple Joseph and Mary Clemens. Mrs Clemens in particular would over some six years be responsible for more than 10,000 numbers in the Mandated Territory (almost all in Morobe District). Carr’s 1935–1936 contribution, from a still poorly-known part of the Owen Stanley Range (in spite of earlier visits by Macgregor and others), was perhaps equally important, his over 5,000 numbers being better prepared and with more duplicates than Mrs Clemens’. Both undertakings resulted in very thorough sampling of their respective areas.
Mrs Clemens first came to Finschhafen with her husband, a retired U.S. Army chaplain, in 1935, after work in the Philippines, Indochina, and Borneo. From then on they worked (after his death late in 1936 she continued on her own) extensively until being hurriedly evacuated in January 1942, collecting perhaps 14,000 numbers of plants. Stations included Malolo (near Salamaua), Wau, Lae, Kaiapit, Wantoat, Boana, Matap, Samanzing, Amieng, Mt Sarawaket, Sambanga (above present Kabwum), Ogeramnang (also visited by Mayr in 1929), Yunzaing, Sattelberg, Wareo, and Quembung, many of them Lutheran mission stations. Collections went until 1939 to Berlin (partly destroyed but duplicates elsewhere), and afterwards (until 1941) to University of Michigan Herbarium (MICH). With the Japanese invasion, all transport was cut off and some collections had to be abandoned at Boana or Finschhafen. The plants were said to have been destroyed but in the 1960s bundles of specimens were uncovered at the two major herbaria in Tokyo (Tokyo University (TI), National Science Museum (TNS)).
Carr, sponsored in part by the British Museum (Natural History), collected plants extensively in the Port Moresby region and on the north and south flanks of the Owen Stanley Mts around Mt Victoria (though not reaching the summit). Localities included Kanosia, Koitaki, Boridi (all in present Central Province), "The Gap," Alola, Lala River, Isurava Mts, Yodda Creek, and Kokoda (Oro Province). Over 5,500 non-orchid and some 1,000 orchid collections were obtained (BMNH, Singapore; many duplicates elsewhere, especially Canberra, Leiden).
Both collections were reported on in similar fashion, mainly either by Diels and others in the later installments of the Beiträge, or by Merrill, Perry, and their collaborators through the Archbold Reports (or elsewhere), but never as a whole; there simply were too many, particularly when all those obtained by Brass on the Archbold Expeditions were also flowing into botanical institutions. Moreover, some of Carr’s collections were not distributed until after World War II; his death in the field meant that this task fell to others. Even today, not all numbers have been fully documented. Some of the Clemens collections moved to Japan were published after 1950 in Japanese outlets.
Among residents in both eastern territories, the most outstanding botanist was Fr Gerhard Peekel, who continued his collecting in New Ireland from stations at Lemakot and Ugana. From Ugana he partly ascended the Lelet Plateau (1,000 m), a highland pocket not, however, collected for plants until after World War II—and where, in contrast to highland New Britain, Nothofagus is absent. With advancing years, he also focused much of his attention on compiling his valuable Illustrierte Flora des Bismarck-Archipels für Naturfreunde, which he saved from destruction under his robes when fleeing combat in 1942, and completed in 1947. The manuscript was after his death deposited in his order’s mother house in Steyl (Germany) and later microfilmed. (A full translation was prepared by E. E. Henty at Lae in the 1970s and 1980s and published in 1985 as Flora of the Bismarck Archipelago for Naturalists; but it is by no means complete for the region.) Others also collected, including two ministers (R. Lister Turner and A. H. Lambton, both in Papua) and, later, a schoolmaster (J. H. L. Waterhouse, in Bougainville and northeast New Britain; K and MAD/WIS); however, Waterhouse’s New Britain collections are relatively few compared with those made in the Solomons.
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