IN the 19th century, the island of Borneo was still one of the most remote places on earth. This was the place where all forces of nature merged to create an environment so unique that through the eyes of an intrepid Englishman, there were animals unlike anywhere else on earth. Rainforest-covered volcanoes soared out of an ocean with ecosystems meeting to create unrivalled biodiversity.
This was Sarawak. A place where Alfred Russel Wallace spent eight years of his life exploring, from Nov 1, 1848 to Jan 25, 1856. This was the place where he made some of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. Wallace played a key role in the discovery of evolution and also laid the foundations for our understanding of how islands influence the natural world.
To him, this region formed part of the Malay Archipelago. To modern biologists today, it is Wallacea: thousands of Southeast Asian islands that lie between Asia and Australia. His research tried to answer one of the most profound questions of all: where does life come from? His exploits would, in time, change the course of history.
Wallace’s expedition resulted in The Malay Archipelago, a narrative of his travels and explorations which remains one of the classic tales from the history of science.
1.Wallace and teams of assistants procured 125,660 natural history specimens between 1854 and 1862. The specimens included insects, birds, reptiles, mammals and shells from Singapore, Sarawak in Borneo, Bali, Lombok, Makassar in Sulawesi, Maluku Islands, Papua, Java and Sumatra. (1)
Yet Alfred Russel Wallace is far from a household name — unlike his compatriot Charles Darwin. But he was undoubtedly a world-changer. While recovering from a bout of malaria on the remote Indonesian island of Halmahera, he ploughed through his illness and worked out the theory of natural selection.(2)
Writing down his idea, the explorer sent it to Charles Darwin who had been contemplating a similar theory of evolution for more than a decade. Both versions were read to members of the Linnean Society — an active biological society founded in London — in 1858.
Today, Darwin is the man who gets the lion’s share of the credit for a theory that provides the mechanism to explain how a species can be slowly transformed into another. Wallace unfortunately has been forgotten.
“Along with Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace must be considered one of the pioneers of evolution, a fundamental principle to truly understand the history of earth,” declares noted British conservationist Datuk Seri Dr. Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, Fifth Earl of Cranbrook.
The distinguished chartered biologist and a global leader in the fields of mammalogy, ornithology and zooarcheology (the study of faunal remains) had just flown in from London at the behest of Yayasan Hasanah and Khazanah Nasional to give a talk on the topic “Tracing Alfred Russel Wallace Collections in Malaysia”.
This is in lieu with Yayasan Hasanah’s and Khazanah’s collaboration with Ecotourism & Conservation Society Malaysia (ECOMY), a ground-breaking project to bring back to Malaysia digitised images of Wallace’s extensive collection of Malayan species amassed during his travels to this side of the world.
FOLLOWING WALLACE’S JOURNEY
Cranbrook has long since passed the age when most of us would be reaching for the pipe and slippers but he’s clearly still fired up by the same tremendous curiosity that has powered his distinguished career in the field of conservation for decades.
“I’d like to go see the birds of paradise again in Papua New Guinea,” he confides to me half-wistfully as an aside.
He’s no stranger to this country, having helped pioneer wildlife research in Malaysia, Indonesia and Britain.
“I first went to Sarawak during the 1950s” he says in his clipped British accent, referring to a long connection with Malaysia and her people, especially Sarawak and the Sarawak Museum, revealing he was first engaged as a technical assistant to the curator in 1956.
He went on to pursue his PhD at University of Birmingham in 1958 and after which, he became a post-doctoral fellow in Indonesia for two years before returning to Malaysia to lecture at University Malaya from 1961 to 1970.
He’s credited with establishing the university’s field study centre in Ulu Gombak, which is still used to this day by both local and foreign researchers for their field work and ecological studies.
Cranbrook has also organised numerous scientific expeditions — such as to Gunung Benom, Pahang in 1967 and to Gunung Lawit, Terengganu, in 1974 — jointly with the Museum of Natural History.
In the late 1970s, he co-authored the first (environmental) management plan for the Mulu National Park. The site is valuable for baseline studies of ecosystemprocesses in the humid tropics.
In 2005, he received the Panglima Negara Bintang Sarawak (Honorary) which carries the title Datuk Seri. In 2014, Cranbrook was bestowed the Merdeka award for his outstanding contribution in pioneering research and conservation of Malaysia’s forest biodiversity and the ecology and biology of Malaysian mammals and birds, and for advocating environmental conservation.
Smartly dressed in chequered shirt and khaki slacks, the 85-year-old sits across the table from me in PJ Hilton looking a little travel-weary. His eyes, however, remain alert and his stature, regal, befitting the quintessential British gentleman.
Reticent at first, his eyes light up when Wallace’s name is mentioned. Sitting up eagerly, he shares: “I first went to Sarawak in 1956. That was exactly 100 years after Wallace was there!”
It’s clear that Cranbrook is a fan of Wallace, as he describes The Malay Archipelago as a very, very fascinating travelogue.”
“Have you read it?” he asks and his face falls a little as I shake my head sheepishly. “Well you should!” is his clipped rejoinder. “It’s a book that’s never been out of print and it still remains a very good read.”
Continuing with a smile, he adds: “A little bit later I went to Java in 1960, again 100 years after Wallace had been there and I realised I was following Wallace. A little while later I was participating with an ornithologist from Yale University in an expedition to Papua New Guinea. I found myself climbing a tree and watching birds of paradise, doing exactly what Wallace was doing!”
He gleefully tells me about Wallace’s account of Jakarta where the explorer complained that the canals were filthy, the transportation was expensive and that the civil servants all went away for a very long lunch.
“A hundred years later, I found the canals still filthy, I couldn’t possibly afford a taxi on my student allowance and the civil servants still went away for a very long lunch!” he quips.
“So nothing had changed after a century?” I ask, half-horrified. “Nothing had changed!” he confirms with a chortle.
In this book, says Cranbrook, the naturalist and explorer who lived in Darwin’s shadow revealed himself to be a truly extraordinary figure. “The observations of Wallace were sufficiently sound to survive as standard biology for more than a century,” he points out.
IN SEARCH OF WALLACE’S DISCOVERIES
The abject fascination of the self-taught Victorian naturalist had Cranbrook amass his own personal collection of Wallace’s specimens.
“I became interested in looking at his specimens much later,” he admits, adding that it was Wallace’s experiences in Sarawak that got his attention. “I’ve been hunting in the British Natural History museum and other museums, the specimens that he collected in Sarawak.”
In March 1854, Wallace left Britain on a collecting expedition to the Malay Archipelago (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and East Timor). He undertook 60 or 70 separate journeys, often in small native boats and canoes, resulting in a combined total of around 14,000 miles (about 22,530km) of travel.(3)
He visited every major island in the archipelago at least once, and several on multiple occasions, and he and his assistants collected almost 110,000 insects, 7,500 shells, 8,050 bird skins, 410 mammal and reptile specimens, in addition to a few ferns. (3)
He collected a total of 212 new bird species (naming about half of them himself); so given that around 10,000 bird species are known, this means that he was responsible for discovering two per cent of the entire world’s bird fauna! (3)
“Wallace kept an enormous amount of written records. And we’ve still got Wallace’s field notebooks which is really fascinating,” says Cranbrook.
Wallace was unusual for his time in that he put a locality label on every specimen he collected. Many of his contemporaries were not as meticulous at recording such information. (3) “He had to sell off some of his collections to fund his explorations,” reveals Cranbrook.
Unfortunately, the owners of his specimens sometimes took his labels off or replaced them with ones of their own. And if they didn’t note the name of the collector (which they sometimes didn’t), it may not be possible to determine whether they were collected by Wallace. (3)
Nevertheless, a lot of Wallace’s materials which were sold once to collectors, were ultimately either sold or bequeathed to museums including the British Natural History Museum.
To compound the difficulty, laments Cranbook, there’s nothing called the Wallace collection in the British Natural History Museum where a good portion of his specimens are housed to this day. “There were just Wallace specimens amongst many specimens that belonged to many other people.” Still, the idea to trace, locate and digitise Wallace’s specimens is a remarkable project, remarks Cranbrook.
“All around the world, across habitats, across taxa and for all kinds of reasons, once-discovered species have fallen off our radar,” explains Cranbrook, adding: “Wallace’s collections can be used positively to compare the past and the present so we can better understand how much the environment has altered, how many species we’ve lost over a century and to find ways to protect what’s left.”
It would seem that Wallace’s adventures are far from over. And Cranbrook agrees. “It’s through this project that Wallace will live on and continue to create an impact with his discoveries,” he says, before concluding: “Darwin may have a prominent place in the pantheon of ideas, but Wallace has a place in the hearts of people who love nature and a life well lived.”
References/Excerpts :
(1) I am Ali Wallace : The Malay Asisstant of Alfred Russel Wallace by John van Wyhe and Gerrell M. Drawhorn in Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.
(2)Tewkesbury Walks - An Exploration of Biogeography and Evolution by Bernard Michaux
(3) George Beccaloni /www.wallacefund.info/wallaces-specimens