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INDRANEIL DAS & NORSHAM YAAKOB (2007)
History), London (now, The Natural History Museum, London), which, in 1872 and 1893–
1894, purchased a collection made by Alfred Hart Everett (Günther 1872; Boulenger 1895a;
1896a; 1906).
Sarawak was a hive of activity, both scientific and ethnographic, at that time. Two other
Europeans, the Italian nobleman Marquis Giacomo Doria of Genoa (1840–1913) and botanist
Odoardo Beccari (1843–1920) landed on the shores of Borneo in June 1865. The latter was to
become famous for his botanical collections (biographies in Cranbrook 1986; Saint 1987),
remained till 1868, and made some significant collections of amphibians and reptiles (see
Shelford 1905b). Beccari’s adventures were recounted in popular vein, initially in his native
Italian (Beccari 1902), the work subsequently translated into English in 1904. The collections
were described by Wilhelm Carl Hartwig Peters (1815–1883), of the Zoologisches Museum
für Naturkunde, in Berlin (Peters 1861, 1862, 1871, 1872), and one in collaboration with
Doria himself (Peters & Doria 1878). Another famous collector from the period was Alfred
Russel Wallace (1823–1913), cofounder, with Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882), of the
theory of evolution through natural selection. Wallace’s collections on Borneo were along the
Simunjan and Sadong Rivers of Sarawak (see Bastin 1986; field sites listed in Baker 2001).
Apart from his herpetological collections (listed by Cranbrook et al. 2005), Wallace influenced
the then Rajah of Sarawak, James Brooke (1803–1868) to establish the Sarawak Museum
(Banks 1983; Leh 1993), in 1886. A recent biography of Wallace was authored by his great
nephew, Wilson (2000), and Wallace himself had described his time in Sarawak and other
parts of south-east Asia in his entertaining memoir, entitled ‘The Malay Archipelago: the land
of the orangutan and the bird of paradise’ (Wallace 1869).
A series of professional curators, hired from Europe, was behind the success of the Sarawak
Museum. The results of their researches were to be published in the scientific organ of this
institution, the Sarawak Museum Journal. The first Curator of the Museum was John E.A.
Lewis, appointed in 1888 (Harrisson 1961a). He was succeeded by George Darby Haviland
(1857–1901) who served between 1893 and 1895. Herpetological research by the first two
Curators were restricted to collections. The first Curator to collect and publish extensively
was Edward Bartlett (ca. 1836–1908; see Das 2000, for a biography), who was associated
with the Museum, between 1895 and 1897. Among Bartlett’s largest work is a 24 page paper
on the crocodiles and lizards of Borneo that were represented in the Sarawak Museum, including
the description of eight new species of lizards (Bartlett 1895e). Additionally, he wrote a series
of papers in The Sarawak Gazette, the monthly official gazette for the staff of the Sarawak
Civil Service, on turtles and tortoises (1894a, 1895a, 1895b, 1896b), amphibians (1894b) and
snakes (1895c, 1895d, 1896a, 1896c). These were reprinted in a book edited by Bartlett (1896d).
In the late 19th Century, two officers in the pay of the Sarawak Civil Service, Charles Hose
(1863–1929) and Alfred Hart Everett (1849–1898), made extensive zoological (and other)
collections in Sarawak, that, via sale, made their way to European and American museums, to
be described by curators there (e.g., Boulenger 1892; 1893; 1895a; 1895b; 1896a). Biographies
and obituaries of Hose are in Nuttall (1927) and Durrans (1993), while those of Everett are in
Anonymous (1898) and Sharpe (1898).
Arguably, the most famous curator the Sarawak Museum had was Robert Walter Campbell
Shelford (1872–1912; see Poulton 1916 for a biography), between 1898 and 1905. Although
primarily interested in entomology, he wrote two taxonomic papers on herpetological subjects
(Shelford 1901b; 1905a; 1906), as well as a checklist of the reptiles of Borneo (Shelford
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