along the Digul River, and on Biak, Yapen, and elsewhere. In 1959 Brongersma returned to lead the scientific team under the Star Mountains expedition (see Integrated Expeditions section, above). In 1960–1961 S. Dillon Ripley (with his wife) came once more to western New Guinea, collecting birds on the northern slopes of the Snow Mountains (Yale).
The 1950s also saw the beginnings of several years of entomological surveys by the Bishop Museum (Honolulu, Hawai’i, U.S.) under the direction of the present writer’s previous co-author, the late J. L. Gressitt (collections therein). In 1955 Gressitt (largely in company with R. T. Simon Thomas, then recently arrived as a government agricultural entomologist, working out of Manokwari) collected insects for a month—mainly in the Wissel Lakes area (including Kamo Valley) but also at Hollandia (now Jayapura), Sentani, the Cyclops Mountains, and Biak Island. In 1957 Gressitt revisited the Cyclops and Biak; in 1958 he spent three weeks in the Swart Valley (Nassau Range)—visited by Lam in 1920—and areas to the west. In 1959 he collected with T. C. Maa in the Cyclops, on Biak Island, and at Fakfak (including caves) and inland on the Bomberai Peninsula. In 1962 he collected in the Cyclops Mts, Biak, Nabire, and Wissel Lakes (partly in company with J. Sedlacek, N. Wilson, and H. C. Clissold). Afterwards Gressitt would become more involved with Papua New Guinea (where from 1961 he had established for the Museum a field station at Wau, which is now the Wau Ecology Institute). Gressitt did, however, make two final trips (1977 and 1979) to Papua, mainly to establish contacts at the Abepura (outside Jayapura) and Manokwari campuses of Cenderawasih University, but also visiting Biak, Sorong, and the Arfak Mountains.
As an associate in Gressitt’s program—but separately—D. E. Hardy in 1957 collected at Manokwari, Anggi Lakes, and elsewhere on the Vogelkop, and Sentani and Hollandia (now Jayapura). In 1959 Maa collected at Waris, Sarmi, Holmafin, the Baliem Valley (then recently opened to outsiders), and Merauke, as well as on the Vogelkop Peninsula, besides the above-mentioned. In 1961 L. W. and Stella Quate collected at Bokondini, Lake Archbold, and Ok Sibil (in the Star Mountains). In 1962 and early 1963, in addition to Sedlacek, Wilson, and Clissold, collecting was done by L. P. Richards, Max C. Thompson, Philip Temple (a participant in expeditions to Mt Jaya, including that of Harrer), Heinrich Holt-mann, and Ray Straatman (all at Bishop Museum). (Straatman later moved to Papua New Guinea.)
On the applied front, during the final years of Dutch rule, Simon Thomas continued as agricultural entomologist (collections, Manokwari). Active as medical entomologists were Rudolph Sloof, Dirk Metzelaar, Johannes van den Assem, and Willem J. O. M. van Dijk; their main concerns were with malaria and mosquitoes (collections, Amsterdam).
Irian Jaya; Papua, Province of Indonesia (since 1963)
After effective (and later de jure) power passed to Indonesia, little animal collecting was done for some two decades. Major activities during this time mostly centered around three surveys in the 1960s. In 1963–1964 the "Cenderawasih Expedition" comprising S. Soemadikarta (from Bogor) and Boeadi collected some animals east of Wissel Lakes (Bogor). Around the same time a Kyoto University science expedition worked from Wissel Lakes to Ngga Pulu; its chief biologist was Y. Yasue. In 1964 came a joint Cenderawasih University/Explorers’ Club of Nanzan University (Japan) climbing trip to Ngga Pulu (on the Mt Jaya massif); one of its participants, Yosii (Nanzan), collected Collembola. In 1977 and 1979 Gressitt made, as already noted, relatively brief visits; while in 1979 Prof. Jared Diamond (see also Fauna of Eastern New Guinea section, below) studied birds along the Mamberamo River and in the Foja (also known as Gauttier) Mts.
In spite of an apparent lull in surveys and collecting, however, official recognition of the need for continuing zoological studies in Province of Irian Jaya came in 1971 with the establishment of a museum on the Abepura campus of Cenderawasih University. This now houses representative collections from the several integrated surveys of more recent decades (see Integrated Expeditions section, above).
FLORA OF EASTERN NEW GUINEA: TERRITORY OF PAPUA AND NEW
GUINEA (TPNG)(1946–1971); PAPUA NEW GUINEA,
INDEPENDENT FROM 1975 (SINCE 1971)
Government: Division of Botany and National Herbarium, Lae
The leading contributions to our stock of collections from eastern New Guinea have since 1945 been made through the Division of Botany, Department of Forests (now PNG Forest Research Institute, or FRI). Its herbarium was in the 1970s designated as the National Herbarium, and its upkeep and enhancement (along with that of the Botanic Garden), as well as research, remain the Division’s (now Section’s) core activities.
The loss due to World War II of all earlier (though not numerous) local collections, the more than 2,000 made in 1944–1945 by forestry services companies (initially taught by C. T. White from the Queensland Herbarium), and the appointment of McAdam (these forces’ commander) as Director for Forests for the postwar Territory of Papua and New Guinea (TPNG) all led to a favorable climate for establishment of a botanical division within the new Department. Although having in its early years an emphasis on forest trees, relatively soon the Department of Agriculture transferred to it all its botanical interests (except for pathogenic fungi); it thus received collections from its staff as well.
Established in 1946 on the 1944–1945 site and in 1949 moved to the new Botanic Garden near the War Cemetery (both sited on a former plantation), the Division was until 1975 directed by J. S. Womersley. From the second set of the Forces’ collections, left behind at war’s end, its herbarium (LAE) and associated collections were strongly developed, along with a program of botanical illustration. A purpose-designed building was opened in 1965. Over time acquisitions included many duplicates from pre-war decades. LAE now is home to a collection of some 300,000 or more higher plants and bryophytes from Papua New Guinea and neighboring areas (particularly Papua and Solomon Islands), and has hosted (and also jointly sponsored) many botanical expeditions from abroad. The staff was at its largest in the 1960s and 1970s. In the latter part of the 1980s the Division became a section within the Forest Research Institute on its incorporation, which also consolidated various Departmental research units within an adjacent new building, constructed (with more herbarium space) with Japanese assistance.
During the years to 1980 (and sometimes beyond), the staff included M. Galore (chief from 1975 to 1983), A. G. Floyd, E. E. Henty (finally senior botanist and, as we have seen, translator and editor of Peekel’s florula of the Bismarck Archipelago), A. Millar (active in particular with the Garden, but from 1971 in Port Moresby), P. van Royen (later at Bishop), D. Sayers (in the Garden, later in Britain), T. G. Hartley (as an associate; later Harvard and then CSIRO, Canberra), A. Gillison (later Bulolo and then CSIRO, Canberra), J. Buderus, D. G. Frodin (the present writer, later at UPNG and Kew, and currently Chelsea Physic Garden), K. Woolliams (in the Garden, later at Waimea Arboretum, Hawai’i), C. E. Ridsdale (later Leiden), A. W. Dockrill (later CSIRO, Atherton, Queensland), M. J. E. Coode (later Kew), J. Vandenberg, D. B. Foreman (later Melbourne), R. J. Johns (later Bulolo, then PNG University of Technology and Kew), P. F. Stevens (later Harvard, then University of Missouri–St. Louis/Missouri Botanical Garden), G. Leach (later UPNG, then Darwin), W. R. Barker (later Adelaide), N. Clunie, J. Croft (later Canberra), B. Conn (later Melbourne and Sydney), P. Katik, Yakas Lelean, Kipira Damas, and J. Wiakabu. In more recent years K. Kerenga, R. Kiapranis, O. Gideon (now UPNG), and R. Banka, and, as an associate, W. Takeuchi, have been active. In excess of 60,000 numbers in the institutional New Guinea Forests (NGF, later LAE) series—continuing on from numbers of collections started in 1944—were collected over some forty years from all parts of the country, at localities too numerous to mention but with many "firsts." Some of these, including a number of mountain summits, were in association with outside expeditions (see below, as well as the section on Collections, below).
The Division has attracted many visitors over the five decades of its existence, some remaining for considerable periods of time and undertaking their own fieldwork or taxonomic or other studies. Some are mentioned below under "Other Collectors." A significant recent project has been a revision of New Guinean palms (together
