Over eene collectie vogelhuiden van Oost-Atjeh (On a collection of bird skins from East Atjeh) was a Dutch-language ornithological paper by Ir. Jhr. F. C. van Heurn and Mr. Dr. Baron R. C. E. G. J. Snouckaert van Schauburg, published in the Jaarberichten of the Koloniaal Instituut, describing a collection of bird skins gathered on two estates in East Atjeh — Aloer Djamboe in Tamiang and Alas Peurba south of Lho Seumawe. Beyond its zoological content the paper is of value to the history of Atjeh for its description of the forests, swamps and coastal landscape of the eastern seaboard and for its record of the relations between scientific collecting and the European plantation companies.
Argument on primeval forest
The authors opened with a methodological argument. Anyone wishing to form a collection of the avifauna of a tropical landscape, they wrote, could expect the most success by choosing for study a district where extensive virgin primeval forests still existed — not because such forests contained numerically more birds than open marshes or cultivated districts, but because the birds of the latter had a wider distribution and were therefore better known. There existed a very great number of typical primeval-forest birds welke oogenblikkelijk verdwijnen, wanneer het oerbosch voor de cultuur moet wijken — which disappear immediately when the primeval forest must give way to cultivation — and of these only a small part could maintain themselves in the relatively small isolated patches of forest that as a rule survived a long time in cultivated districts.
The degree to which the capacity to adapt to altered conditions of life was developed appeared, they held, to be highly specific for each species. They illustrated this from the Sumatran doves. The common grey dove (Streptopelia suratensis tigrina) had adapted so easily that it multiplied enormously and had become so numerous and so little shy on fields and roads dat zij herhaaldelijk door auto’s overreden worden — that they were repeatedly run over by motor cars. The common green dove (Osmotreron vernans) was likewise very numerous in the cultivated area, feeding readily on the ripe berries of Lantana camara, the plant that formed the dominant vegetation on tobacco fields abandoned some years before.
Far less numerous were the small Osmotreron olax and the brilliant golden-green Chalcophaps indica, which unconditionally required forest, though in many cases content with secondary young forest or kampong terrain. Shyest of all before every advance of civilisation was the poenei djamboe (Ptilinopus jambu), de meest opvallende en schitterendste duif van Sumatra — the most striking and most brilliant dove of Sumatra, green with a brilliant crimson head and a light breast bearing a crimson spot.
The Marsden quotation
The authors noted that this jewel of Sumatra’s fauna had been known for centuries, and quoted William Marsden’s The History of Sumatra (London, 1784, p. 125) at length in the original English: “The punei jambu is smaller than the usual size of doves; the back, wings and tail are green, the breast and crop are white, but the front from the latter has a slight shade of pink; the forepart of the head is of a deep pink, resembling the blossom of the jambu fruit, from whence its name; the white of the breast is continued in a narrow streak, having the green on one side and the pink on the other, half round the eye, which is large, full and yellow, of which colour is also the beak. It will live upon boiled rice and padi, but its favourite food, when wild, is the berry of the rumpunnei (Ardisia coriacea), perhaps from this circumstance so called.”
Even so, they observed, the poenei djamboe was only exceptionally observed in the pure cultivated area; one had to seek it in or near the original primeval forest. The species was represented in the collection here described.
Atjeh as a field for the naturalist
The paper contains a notable general judgement on Atjeh as a scientific field: Geen deel van Sumatra toch bevat uitgestrektere oerbosschen dan Atjeh — no part of Sumatra contains more extensive primeval forests than Atjeh. Richer in natural beauty than the famous Padangsche Bovenlanden, more virgin and still less visited by naturalists, this was the land that asked for further study and that would give the investigator unlimited satisfaction. Boundless swamps overgrown with dense, immensely high reed alternated with heavy primeval forests, while deeper in the mountains pine woods and grass plains brought the most perfect variety into the otherwise monotonous primeval-forest landscape.
Geography of the east coast
The densely overgrown hill country that fringed the mountains reached the coast in East Atjeh at only a few places. One of these was in Tamiang, the frontier province with the well-forested afdeeling Langkat of the Gouvernement Sumatra’s Oostkust. In that landscape especially, the coastal strip was as picturesque and the natural scenery as overwhelming as was nowhere else to be met with along the whole east coast of Sumatra. Numbers of smaller and larger rivers debouched into the Aroe-baai, with many ramifications through which the sea water could penetrate far inland at flood; this produced, for Sumatra’s flat strands, the remarkable aspect of steep high hills overgrown with primeval forest, surrounded at the foot by a girdle of mangrove.
For the rest, almost the whole plain along the coast of East Atjeh had been brought into cultivation by a fairly dense population. Further inland the population had not penetrated, or only sporadically; but from the coastal districts the so-called European cultures had struck some deep breaches into the primeval forest.
The collecting localities and the Handelsvereeniging Amsterdam
The birds described were collected on heavy hill country at the boundary of plantation and original forest, on the estate Aloer Djamboe at 50 metres above sea level in Tamiang, and on the estate Alas Peurba at 200 metres above the sea, about eighteen kilometres south of Lho Seumawe.
The authors recorded their debt to the plantation company: collecting at these particularly suitable places would certainly have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, had the agency of the Handelsvereeniging Amsterdam, under whose management the said estates stood, not granted permission and provided all requested facilities. Dit bewijs van belangstelling van een commercieel lichaam in zuiver wetenschappelijk werk verdient zeker hooge waardeering — this proof of the interest of a commercial body in purely scientific work certainly deserves high appreciation.
A photograph in the paper shows Paja Tjitjem of vogelmoeras — the Paja Tjitjem or bird-swamp — described as one of the boundless swamps overgrown with high reed in north-eastern Atjeh.
The authors refer the reader for the map to their earlier study, Avifaunistische Studiën in de Gajo-landen, in the same Jaarberichten no. II, 1921, p. 3.
See Also
- F. C. van Heurn
- R. C. E. G. J. Snouckaert van Schauburg
- Aloer Djamboe
- Alas Peurba
- Paja Tjitjem
- Handelsvereeniging Amsterdam
- Tamiang
- Oost-Atjeh
- William Marsden
- Poenei djamboe
Source
Over eene collectie vogelhuiden van Oost-Atjeh, door Ir. Jhr. F. C. van Heurn en Mr. Dr. Baron R. C. E. G. J. Snouckaert van Schauburg, in Jaarberichten (Koloniaal Instituut). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Br N 95-1210
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Over eene collectie vogelhuiden van Oost-Atjeh by Ir. Jhr. F. C. van Heurn and Mr. Dr. Baron R. C. E. G. J. Snouckaert van Schauburg (Koloniaal Instituut, Jaarberichten). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.