Over de tweede Atjeh-collectie van Jhr. F. C. van Heurn — On the second Atjeh collection of Jhr. F. C. van Heurn — is a Dutch-language ornithological paper by Mr. Dr. Baron R. C. E. G. J. Snouckaert van Schauburg, published in the Jaarberichten (Yearbook) of the Koloniaal Instituut in Amsterdam, describing a collection of bird skins gathered by Ir. Jhr. F. C. van Heurn at the estates Alas Peurba (200 metres above sea level) and Aloer Djamboe (50 metres above sea level) in East Atjeh in the months September–November 1920. The paper is the second of two papers by Snouckaert on the avifaunal collections of Van Heurn in Atjeh, the first — the Avifaunistische Studien in de Gajo-landen — having described the earlier collection made in the region of Lake Takengon (1200 metres) in Gajo-land.
Authorship and character
The paper is the work of Snouckaert alone. Van Heurn, having returned to the Netherlands (onlangs in het vaderland teruggekeerd), asked Snouckaert to work up the collection: De Heer van Heurn, onlangs in het vaderland teruggekeerd, heeft mij verzocht ook deze verzameling te bewerken, van welke opdracht ik mij met genoegen kwijt — “Mr. van Heurn, recently returned to the fatherland, has asked me to work up this collection too, a commission which I have discharged with pleasure.” The paper thus stands in a different relation to the collector from the later, joint paper Over eene collectie vogelhuiden van Oost-Atjeh, which was co-authored by Van Heurn and Snouckaert. In the second-collection paper, Van Heurn is the collector and Snouckaert the author; in the later paper, the two men appear together as joint authors.
The collecting localities
The paper opens by contrasting the localities of the second collection with those of the first. The first collection — described in Avifaunistische Studien in de Gajo-landen, in issue I (afl. I) of the previous Jaarbericht — had been made in the region of Lake Takengon (1200 metres) in Gajo-land (Atjeh). The second collection was made at much lower-lying localities nearer the northeast coast: Ditmaal viel de keuze op veel lager gelegen localiteiten meer nabij de N.O.-kust, te weten de ondernemingen Alas Peurba (200 M.) en Aloer Djamboe (50 M.) — “This time the choice fell on much lower-lying localities nearer the northeast coast, namely the estates Alas Peurba (200 M.) and Aloer Djamboe (50 M.).” The shift from the highland Gayo country to the lowland estates of the East Coast was a deliberate choice, and gave the two collections a complementary character: the first sampled the montane avifauna of the interior, the second the lowland avifauna of the coastal plain.
The collecting was done in the months September–November 1920. Snouckaert records the dates of individual specimens throughout the paper, so that the chronology of the collecting can be followed in detail. The earliest date recorded is 11 September 1920 (specimens of Rollulus roulroul, Picus vittatus, Dendronanthus indicus, and Microtarsus melanocephalus at Alas Peurba); the latest is 25 November 1920 (specimens of Spilornis cheela bacha, Eurystomus orientalis, Zanclostomus javanicus, Chloropsis cyanopogon, and Arachnothera affinis at Aloer Djamboe).
Method
Snouckaert states that he has followed the systematic order used by Robinson and Kloss for their species list of Sumatra, Voor het gemak van eventueele vergelijking heb ik wederom de systematische volgorde door Robinson en Kloss voor hun soortenlijst van Sumatra aangenomen — “For the sake of ease of comparison, I have again adopted the systematic order used by Robinson and Kloss for their species list of Sumatra.” The paper is thus arranged as a taxonomic catalogue, family by family, with each entry giving the original binomial citation, the sex and number of specimens, the locality, and the date of collection. Snouckaert adds enkele opmerkingen — “a few remarks” — to many of the entries, in which he discusses the plumage, sex, or subspecific identification of the specimens, and compares them with material from Malaya, Borneo, Java, and elsewhere in the archipelago.
The collection
The paper records specimens from a wide range of bird families, including the Phasianidae (the crested wood-partridge Rollulus roulroul), the Columbidae (pigeons and doves, including Ptilinopus jambu and Streptopelia chinensis tigrina), the Falconidae (the crested serpent-eagle Spilornis cheela bacha), the Coraciidae (the broad-billed roller Eurystomus orientalis), the Alcedinidae (kingfishers, including Ceyx tridactyla and Halcyon concreta), the Bucerotidae (hornbills), the Meropidae (bee-eaters, including Merops philippinus and Nyctiornis amicta), the Trogonidae (trogons), the Cuculidae (cuckoos), the Picidae (woodpeckers), the Eurylaemidae (broadbills), the Pittidae (pittas, including Pitta granatina vanheurni, which Kloss named after the collector), the Turdidae (thrushes), the Laniidae (shrikes), the Dicruridae (drongos), the Oriolidae (orioles), the Sturnidae (starlings, including the hill myna Gracula javana javana), the Motacillidae (wagtails and pipits), the Nectariniidae (sunbirds and spiderhunters), and others.
The paper is notable for the record of Pitta granatina vanheurni — a subspecies of the garnet pitta named after Van Heurn by Kloss — of which Snouckaert records a juvenile male collected at Alas Peurba on 13 September 1920. Snouckaert notes that the Sumatran form of the garnet pitta had only recently become known to science, and that Van Heurn’s two (or three) specimens were among the very few then in collections. He records, however, that Van Heurn himself, on the basis of the material he had examined, was of the opinion that the distinction of the Sumatran form from the Malayan coccinea was not well founded — a difference of judgement between the collector and the ornithologist who named the subspecies.
Relationship to the other Van Heurn–Snouckaert papers
The Over de tweede Atjeh-collectie is one of three papers that record the avifaunal collecting of Van Heurn in Atjeh. The first — the Avifaunistische Studien in de Gajo-landen — described the earlier collection made in the region of Lake Takengon in Gajo-land in 1920, and was published in issue I (afl. I) of the previous Jaarbericht of the Koloniaal Instituut. The second — the present paper — described the collection made at Alas Peurba and Aloer Djamboe in September–November 1920. The third — the Over eene collectie vogelhuiden van Oost-Atjeh — was co-authored by Van Heurn and Snouckaert, and described material collected on the same estates (Aloer Djamboe in Tamiang and Alas Peurba south of Lho Seumawe) in a later, more comprehensive treatment.
Deposit
The collection described in the paper was deposited with the Boekerij van het Koloniaal Instituut — the Library of the Koloniaal Instituut — in Amsterdam, as recorded on the final page of the paper.
Significance
The Over de tweede Atjeh-collectie van Jhr. F. C. van Heurn is significant within the AcehWiki corpus as the source document for the second of the two avifaunal collections made by Van Heurn in Atjeh in 1920, and as the document that records the lowland, East-Coast complement to the earlier montane, Gayo-land collection. The paper is a document of the natural-historical work that was carried on in Atjeh in the early civilian period — after the Atjeh War and the pacification — by Dutch scientific collectors working through the estates and the research institutions of the colony. The paper’s record of Pitta granatina vanheurni is a document of the contribution of Van Heurn’s collecting to the formal taxonomy of the Sumatran avifauna, and of the naming of an Atjehnese bird subspecies after the collector.
See Also
- R. C. E. G. J. Snouckaert van Schauburg
- F. C. van Heurn
- Avifaunistische Studien in de Gajo-landen
- Over eene collectie vogelhuiden van Oost-Atjeh
- Alas Peurba
- Aloer Djamboe
- Takengon
- Gajo-land
- Oostkust van Atjeh
- Koninklijke Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut
- Lho Seumawe
- 1920
- 1921
Source
Over de tweede Atjeh-collectie van Jhr. F. C. van Heurn, door Mr. Dr. Baron R. C. E. G. J. Snouckaert van Schauburg, in Jaarberichten van de Koninklijke Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut (Amsterdam). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, shelfmark Br N 95-1208.
Note on the source text. The paper was digitised and processed through OCR (Nemotron-OCR v2). The OCR output is of good quality, and the species names, dates, and localities recorded above are transcribed from the legible text. Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering. The systematic catalogue of species has been summarised at the family level; the full species list, with dates and localities of individual specimens, is given in the source.