Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy 123

150 4 Ornithologist and Zoogeographer
Three color plates by Francis Lee Jaques and numerous excellent line drawings by
Alexander Seidel illustrate 55 species of birds 3 . A second edition appeared in 1949.
When the copyright had expired, two different reprints were published immediately;
one in Hawaii and the other in England (Wheldon and Wesley Ltd., 1968);
still another one came out in the States in 1978. Ernst Mayr was delighted that his
book got such wide distribution. Since taxonomically nothing of importance has
happened in the area, BirdsoftheSouthwestPacificis still reasonably up-to-date.
Of course, there are today several more recent field guides available, like South
Pacific Birds (duPont 1976), Birdsof HawaiiandtheTropicalPacific(Pratt et al.
1987), Birds of the Solomons, Vanuatu and New Caledonia (Doughty et al. 1999)
and A Guide to the Birds of Fiji and western Polynesia (Watling 2001) with excellent
color illustrations of all species and many subspecies of the birds. Rollin Baker
(1951) published a comprehensive account of the avifauna of Micronesia based
on collections assembled during World War II and comparisons with Whitney
material at the AMNH.
Mayr was the bird specialist for the whole wide region from the Solomon Islands
to Polynesia. Being the authority for a vast area gave Mayr some satisfaction, but
he always regretted that he did not have competitors (pers. comm.). In many areas
of the world various specialists usually have a great time disagreeing with each
other. Here in Oceania, what Mayr said was correct. Only in the Papuan Region
did he encounter occasional dissent, e.g., when he overlooked two sibling species,
Pachycephala melanura and Meliphaga orientalis.
Several young ornithologists soon started to work with the Whitney material
independently but under Mayr’s supervision. These were Dean Amadon who published
three papers in the Whitney series entitled “Notes on some non-passerine
genera” (1942a, 1942b, 1943), Dillon S. Ripley and Hugh Birckhead who studied
“The fruit pigeons of the Ptilinopus purpuratus group” (1942). Amadon stayed at
the AMNH, later becoming the Chairman of the Bird Department; Ripley became
Fig.4.4. Distribution and character variation of the Island Thrush (Turdus poliocephalus
group). Map from Mayr (1942e: 58), illustrations of birds from MacKinnon and Phillipps
(1993, Indonesia), Doughty et al. (1999, Solomons and Vanuatu) and Pratt et al. (1987; Fiji
and Samoa)
3 Whereas F.L. Jaques (1887–1969) was a well-known bird artist employed by the AMNH,
A. Seidel remains unknown in ornithological circles. He was born in Germany where he
studied art first in Munich and then, for five years, in Rome. His early work included
murals for an industrial concern in Rüdersdorf and settings and costumes for a theater
in Berlin. He came to the United States as a tourist in 1939 and decided to stay, when the
war broke out. For some time he was a houseguest with Ernst and Gretel Mayr and from
1943 to 1961 a staff artist for the AMNH where he illustrated many ornithological books
and scientific papers and painted murals of extinct birds, saurians, and primates. He
has provided illustrations for Collier’s Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Americana
and has published two books for young people, about wild birds and water mammals
(biography prepared by Steuben Glass, AMNH, March 1963).
◮