Buller’s Albatross—Tick. Buller’s Shearwater—Tick. Buller’s or Black-billed Gull—Tick.
In, and off the coast of, New Zealand it is easy to see the full set of birds named after Buller. I really had not thought about Buller until we saw these species over a period of a few days earlier this year.
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| Sir Walter Buller Portrait by Ethel Mortlock |
Sir Walter Buller (1838-1906) was a social climbing lawyer, government administrator and amateur ornithologist who, I was surprised to discover, was elected to the Royal Society in 1879. He seems to enjoy a mixed reputation in New Zealand, mainly, it has to be said, not good.
Ornithology is one of those ‘ologies’ that does not mean what it says. Thus, ornithology has meant—and continues to mean—not the study of all aspects of the life of birds but what those who called themselves ornithologists defined ornithology to be. Some areas of biology are ‘in’; others are ‘out’. At the time of Buller ornithology was the collection of birds for museums (public and private institutions), their distribution and their taxonomy. The only part of the bird (apart from eggs) that was preserved was the skin. Because there was great rivalry between institutions and wealthy individuals for specimens, there was an active market. Collectors in exotic places shot and trapped large numbers of birds—the rarer the better—to sell to the museums.
Buller became the leading expert on the ornithology of New Zealand.
The son of Methodist missionaries, he started as a a native interpreter in the magistrates’ courts. but by self promotion and ability he rose in the department of government dealing with the purchase of Maori lands. Throughout this time he worked on his birds to the extent that he had enough material to write a major book. In 1871 he obtained a government grant, leave on half pay and a job with the New Zealand agent in order to go to London to arrange publication.
A website on New Zealand history has the story:
Buller drew up an initial outline for his book in July 1867. At about the same time his ornithological work was subjected to its first critical analysis. A German ornithologist, Otto Finsch, had obtained a copy of an essay Buller had distributed to various institutions in London. Buller had prepared the essay for the New Zealand Exhibition in 1865 but this was the first time it had been made available in print. Finsch, who had 'made a special study of the birds of the Pacific Islands', took issue with some of the new species Buller identified. His attempt to analyse and classify species was at odds with the approach of most contemporary New Zealand scientists, who were prepared to leave this responsibility to the ‘experts' in Europe. Buller fought off the criticism but also realised that for his book to be taken seriously he would have to base himself in London and make use of the superior library and museum facilities there.
Buller didn't revive his book outline until July 1870. By this time Dr James Hector, then 'the key figure in New Zealand science', was less enthusiastic about a proposal he and Buller had worked out in 1867. This entailed Buller donating his specimens (then numbering over 200) to the Colonial Museum, in exchange for the government contributing £300 towards the book's publication. Hector was particularly concerned that Buller's specimens were worth less than they had discussed. Cabinet accepted Hector's recommendation that Buller be required to provide the government with 25 copies of his book and approved the grant. The following year Buller asked Dr Isaac Featherston, who had seconded him to work on the Rangitikei-Manawatu purchase, to support his application for special leave from his position as resident magistrate in Whanganui. Buller was granted 18 months leave on half pay plus a return passage to London, where he arrived in October 1871.
As part of the agreement Buller also negotiated a position as part-time private secretary to Featherston, who was due to be appointed New Zealand's new agent general in London. His salary was to be equivalent to his total income at Whanganui. This was fuel for the Opposition, who accused the government of patronage. They seized on the fact that the new magistrate at Whanganui was receiving only a third of the £600 Buller was getting while on leave in London, and noted that Buller was earning more in London that he had in Whanganui. Though Buller explained the disparity as a mistake in his estimate of court fees, he was eventually forced to resign his magistrate's position. Featherston was instructed not to employ him as secretary. The Evening Post scornfully reported on the situation on 18 August 1873:
Mr Walter Buller has hitherto been one of Fortune's favourites in the Civil Service – one of those curled darlings who must be provided for at all hazards, and who had only to open his mouth in order to have it filled with plums.
However, when his book, A History of the Birds of New Zealand, was published in parts in 1872-73, it was so highly praised that the British Government awarded him a civil honour, Companionship of the Order of St Michael and St George, in 1875. His more senior and unrewarded colleagues back home in New Zealand were left, apparently, spitting feathers.
The book was also a commercial success. He sent the 25 copies promised to the New Zealand administration with a note pointing out that all but 40 of the 500 printed had been subscribed for (subscribers included Charles Darwin). But London had more to offer than a publisher for his book; he read law and was called to the Bar in 1874.
When Buller returned to New Zealand he practised as a barrister. By all accounts his advocacy in the Native Land Courts was controversial but highly lucrative, so lucrative that he retired from the law and moved back to London to become a commissioner for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition of 1886. For that his CMG was raised to KCMG. He became Sir Walter Buller.
Throughout his professional life, his work on birds continued apace. A new, enlarged, edition of his book was published in 1888.
After what are described as business difficulties took him back to New Zealand in 1890 he became embroiled in a legal dispute over land he had bought from the Maori Te Keepa. In defending and winning what actually his own case he acted for Te Keepa—and charged him for the privilege.
Buller then returned to England in 1899 enjoying the life of a gentleman naturalist in the social scene of late Victorian London.
Apart from what are now regarded as dodgy dealings over Maori land deals his counsel of despair over the fate of New Zealand’s native wildlife and his dealing in birds is perhaps what he is best remembered for.
Buller was of the opinion that everything native to New Zealand would be replaced by the more vigorous European immigrants. Introduced British birds and mammals were spreading through the newly-created fields and non-native forests. The Maori, he argued, were doomed. He therefore opposed conservation of both native forests and birds as a hopeless exercise. Eventually he did back pleas for the statutory protection of native birds and the creation of sanctuaries on two offshore islands. Although he backed these efforts, Buller remained unconvinced that they would have any significant effect and continued to collect specimens of the rarer birds for his own studies (‘in the interests of science’) and others. Selling skins to collectors throughout the world was highly lucrative.
Buller’s spectacular falling out with Lord Rothschild, that great collector with a private museum, to whom he sold skins, and their bickering in print, I will write about later.
Buller’s links with Otto Frisch (1839-1917) in Germany are noted above, with Frisch objecting to Buller’s erection of some new species. However, there must have been some rapport because Buller was awarded, with Finsch's assistance, a doctorate in natural history by Tübingen University in 1871. Finsch, though, like Buller, had political interests as well as professional ornithological ones. He was involved in German colonial expansion in the Pacific and as Bismarck's Imperial Commissioner in 1884 he negotiated the deal whereby the north-east of New Guinea together with some islands became a German protectorate.
Even a quick perusal of his major work (first edition online here) shows the immense amount of work that went into it, all of it gathered while employed in the civil service. After the second edition (1887-88), he produced a two-volume Supplement in 1905 to bring it up to date.
I am by no means convinced that Buller deserved the brickbats he has received in New Zealand in recent years. He was, after all, an ornithologist—a highly gifted and dedicated ornithologist—doing what ornithologists of the time did. Yes, he was a pessimist, arguing that the extinction of native species—which did occur—was inevitable. But anybody visiting New Zealand today can see the reason for that pessimism: a mainly artificial landscape devastated by the spread of agriculture and non-native forestry; two waves of human migration both of which resulted in the killing of spectacular native birds for ceremonial purposes or museums; the introduction of alien species some of which like the Stoat, Weasel, Brush-tailed Possum, mice and rats plus the domestic cat kill the native birds. New Zealand is trying very hard, starting with the predator-cleared islands, to prevent further extinctions and to promote the restoration of habitat throughout the country. So far it has done a brilliant job but the ambition to rid the entire country of its alien predators has a very long way to go.
And here are Buller's eponymous species:
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| Buller's or Black-billed Gull (Larus bulleri) - left From Buller's book. Illustration by John Gerrard Keulemans |
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| Buller's Albatross (Thalassarche bulleri) Taken by a member of the Noble Caledonia Expedition Team on board MV Caledonian Sky 28 January 2019 |
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| Buller's Shearwater (Ardenna bulleri) Photo Aviceda at English Wikipedia |
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