Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy 123

88 2 The Budding Scientist
follows: (1) For comparative purposes, he collected good series of birds in the
Arfak Mountains (which represent the type region for many New Guinea birds)
and made a vain attempt at finding some of the “rare Birds of Paradise.” (2) He
assembled further collections in the isolated Wondiwoi Mountains, Wandammen
Peninsula, and in the Cyclops Mountains at the northern coast. (3) Bird collections
were also made on the ornithologically poorly known Huon Peninsula (Saruwaget
Mountains) and in the nearby Herzog Mountains, and (4) on certain islands in
the Solomon Group, east of New Guinea. Besides containing a large number of
bird species and subspecies new to science, Mayr’s collections, together with other
museum material, formed the basis for his later taxonomic and zoogeographical
work.
Mayr, excellently prepared prior to his departure, knew most of the birds of
New Guinea and their approximate altitudinal distribution from his study of the
literature and the collections in the Museums of Natural History of Berlin and
Tring. He was able to judge whether a particular bird was rare or desirable and
whether it showed any peculiarities of interest to science. Therefore his samples
were of unusual quality, containing relatively few of the common and well-known
birds so often found in the collections of inexperienced travelers.
During the expedition long letters from Hartert, Stresemann and the botanist
Dr. Diels contained numerous suggestions indicating the interest with which his
sponsors followed Mayr’s work. He himself sent detailed reports to Berlin and also
to Tring relating many adventures. Stresemann published some of these letters
while Mayr was still away (e.g., Mayr 1929b). His rich collections of bird skins
were worked on by Hartert (1930) who published on the birds obtained in Dutch
New Guinea and by Mayr (1931l) himself who studied the birds from the Huon
Peninsula (Mandated Territory). The fresh and well-labeled material with exact
locality data was important for comparisons with birds from other parts of New
Guinea which in many cases had only imprecise or no locality data at all. But the
“rare Birds of Paradise” proved to be elusive. Mayr related their story, the great
enigma of New Guinea ornithology, in a lecture on “the joy of research” many
years later:
“Prior to 1920, it was the height of fashion for a lady to have the plumes of
aBirdofParadiseonherhat.Tenthousandsofthesebirds,whichoccuronlyin
New Guinea, were collected each year by the natives and shipped to the big plume
dealers in Paris and London. In addition to the common species, these collections
includedeveryonceinawhilesomerareorevennewspeciesofBirdofParadise
from some remote mountain range. And this is where Lord Rothschild comes into
the picture. He had a standing offer of one hundred pounds (in those days an
awful lot of money) for any new species of Bird of Paradise found among the skins
collected by the natives. Over the years he was able to describe quite a few of such
new species. But this method of collecting was scientifically most unsatisfactory,
because one knew nothing about these birds, not even the part of New Guinea
from which they might have come. One scientific expedition after another had
gone to various parts of New Guinea between 1870 and 1920 to discover the home
of these species and to discover new species of other bird families. And they indeed