3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

90 2 The Budding Scientist
transmittal lists of these collections are preserved in the Museum of Natural History
Berlin (Historische Bild- und Schriftgutsammlungen, Bestand Zool. Museum,
Signatur SIII, E. Mayr “Schriftwechsel und Sammellisten seiner Expeditionen nach
Neuguinea”).
The director of the Botanical Garden in Berlin-Dahlem, Ludwig Diels, sent him
detailed suggestions as to which groups of plants to collect and what practical
points to observe. The total plant collection comprised several thousand sheets
with dried plants. Those from former Dutch New Guinea were sent to Leiden via
Java and were used in several subsequent Dutch publications (see below). The rich
material from the Huon Peninsula went to the Botanical Museum in Berlin-Dahlem
where it was destroyed during World War II without anybody ever having studied
the majority of these plants. This greatly saddened Mayr because he had invested
an enormous amount of time and effort in these plant collections. No plants had
been collected during the short stay in the Herzog Mountains, where Mayr was
alone most of the time.
Two botanists studied specimens from Papua Province (Irian Jaya, former Dutch
New Guinea): Burret (1933) published the descriptions of eight new species of
palms and named three species of different genera “Mayrii.” Among the 78 species
of orchids listed by J. J. Smith (1934) 26 species and 2 varieties were new to science.
Threeofthemwerenamed“Mayrii.” Among 12 species of Ericaceae four were new
and one was named “Mayrii” (J.J. Smith 1936).
In the two articles authored by J.J. Smith (1934, 1936), 13 species are listed
“without locality” because one of Mayr’s field catalogues had been lost in Leiden.
These numbers “without locality” were all collected on the Cyclops Mountains
(Mayr, pers. comm.). His plant collecting activities in Irian Jaya (Papua Province)
have been summarized in “Flora Malesiana,” ed. C. van Steenis, Spermatophyta,
vol. 1 (1950), pp. 352–353 and the species names dedicated to him have been
listed by Backer (1936). Later Vink (1965) and Van Royen (1965) mentioned Mayr’s
botanical researches in the Arfak and Cyclops Mountains, respectively, and Vink
(l.c.) presented a sketch map of his expedition route.
Similar to Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, and Erwin Stresemann
who had also traveled in the tropics as young men and never visited these areas
again, Mayr’s tripartite expedition to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands remained
his only expedition experience which, however, formed the basis of much
theoretical work in later years. He worked on the material from Oceania at the
AMNH until the late 1930s, when World War II interfered with new expedition
plans. It was only during the winter of 1959/1960 that he was able to travel again
overseas visiting remote regions in Australia.
Future Plans
Mayr’s expedition notebooks reveal that he intended to write a book, The Birdlife of
Germany.Theycontaindetailednotesontopicstobeincluded(migration,ecology,
food and feeding, psychology, breeding biology, etc.) and procedures to be followed