For the answer let’s start in Washington D.C. where the president sits at a desk given to him by Queen Victoria. Her Majesty’s Ship Resolute was abandoned in the Arctic by the Royal Navy while searching for the lost expedition led by Sir John Franklin in 1854. The ship broke free from the ice the next summer and was found by an American whaler. It was repaired and returned to Britain by the U.S. government as a gesture of goodwill at a time when the president had been threatening British interests and wanting to annex Canada. In 1879 Resolute was decommissioned and three desks were made from its oak timbers. One of those desks was sent to Washington and was received at the White House on 23 November 1880.
The naval officer in charge of the five-ship squadron sent to search for Franklin was Edward Belcher.
 |
| Edward Belcher |
It was Belcher, commanding HMS Sulphur, who was given the job of surveying Hong Kong harbour in 1841. He was present, having landed a day earlier, at the ceremony to take over Hong Kong on 26 January. Belcher’s Battery overlooking Hong Kong harbour was named after him when it was constructed in the 1880s. The battery was replaced by housing for government employees in the 1950s. That complex, Belcher’s Gardens*, in turn was replaced by six tower blocks with the name still retained—but oddly phrased—as The Belcher’s.
Hemidactylus brookii, a gecko, was thus named by John Edward Gray (1800-1875) of the British Museum in his catalogue of lizards of 1854. Two specimens from Borneo were given to the museum by Edward Belcher, presumably on his return to London on 31 December 1847. They were collected in 1843 when Belcher was in command of another survey ship HMS Samarang working on the north coast of Borneo. I will return to the gecko later. But first the man linking all these events and many more besides.
I have written previously on Belcher HERE. Edward Belcher was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1793. He joined the Royal Navy, at the usual age for an officer of 13, as a midshipman. His reputation can only be described as dichotomous. He was widely praised as a hydrographic surveyor, geographer and promoter of the natural sciences, his activities continuing after his retirement from the active navy list. By contrast, he was thoroughly loathed by almost all those he came into contact with whether his peers, his seniors or his juniors on board his ships.
Back with the gecko, here is Gray’s description of the beast.
In Borneo—and Sarawak in particular—Belcher was in close contact with and supporting the famous White Rajah, Sir James Brooke (1803-1868), in his efforts to clear pirates from the seas. Subsequent publications treat the gecko as having been named in honour of James Brooke. However it would appear that Gray did not know that Brooke had an ‘e’ on the end because he published the common name as ‘Brook’s Hemidactylus’ and the specific name as ‘brookii’. In his 1854 catalogue he lists people who had donated specimens to the Museum. He shows Belcher in the list as well as ‘J. Brooks, Esq’. However, searching the volume there is no further mention of Brooks or Brooke. But we have ‘Brook’s’ and ‘brookii’ in the description of the gecko. Perhaps Belcher had intimated to Gray or his boss a patronym for Brooke woukld go down well but that Gray did not know of Brooke and how to spell his name.
Albert Günther in reviewing the reptiles and amphibians of Borneo in 1872 clearly realised the central role of James Brooke:
The first extensive collections received in Europe were from two localities :—1…. …2. From the principality of Sarawak, where Sir J. Brooke, Sir E. Belcher, and Mr. Low paid for a considerable period much attention to the fauna. The collections made by them were presented to the British Museum, and described partly by Dr. Gray, and partly more recently by the author in the Catalogues of the British Museum and in the ‘ Reptiles of British India.’…
 |
| Sir James Brooke late 1850s. By Herbert Watkins Natonal Portrait Gallery |
Because of the evidence that the patronym was coined for James Brooke, some authors now use ‘Brooke’s Gecko’ for the common name.
But what of the gecko itself. When I was a lad Hemidactylus brookii was seen as a very widely distributed species of the tropics that, along with other species of gecko, had been transported by ship to other countries, like South America and parts of south-east Asia to which it was not native. Africa was regarded as its stronghold. In more recent decades H. brookii has been looked at more closely. Is it just one species or a number of different species that had either not been recognised or lumped into H. brookii by the early generations of taxonomists. And what a can of worms H. brookii has proved to be.
One of the problems stems from the way in which taxonomists worked. Taxonomist A would receive a specimen and decide if it was like anything else he had seen or been recorded. If not he would give it a new scientific name. Taxonomist B probably working in a different country would receive a similar specimen and, unaware of the work of A or disagreeing with him, would give it a different scientific name. Those coming later would gain access to both specimens or descriptions and declare them to be of the same species, or not. If the same they were synonymous and lumped into a single species, the name having priority being the earliest to have reached publication. The problem is that taxonomists usually gave no reason, either quantitative or qualitative, why they had reached their conclusion. Such decisions taken in the past, decided solely on morphological features of pickled specimens, have to be question in the light of the application of quantitative methods and/or non-morphological evidence like DNA. Depending on the ‘species concept’ being used by particular modern taxonomists, decisions are made on whether or not those old taxonomists were right or wrong, or perhaps I should say more likely to be right or more likely to be wrong since there is still disagreement as to what constitutes a species. Some of the concepts used seem nonsensical to outsiders like me and remind me of the drunk looking for his keys under a street lamp when he had dropped them further down the road in the dark on the grounds that it was easier to search where he could see. The complexity of what has been going on with regard to Brooke’s Gecko can be seen in the taxonomy section of the entry for the species in the IUCN’s Red List HERE together with the relevant references.
The present state appears to be that H. brookii has been split asunder. The African forms previously included in H. brookii have been assigned to a different but previously synonymised species (H. angulatus described by Edward Hallowell in 1854) leaving Asia as the natural range. Further studies on Asian specimens in museums indicate that other forms regarded as synonyms in the past should be reinstated while others should be brought back in.
 |
| Distribution of H. brookii from the IUCN Red List |
 |
| Distribution of H. angulatus from the IUCN Red Data List |
In a final twist to the story of Belcher, Brooke’s Gecko is now known to occur in Hong Kong. First reported in 1978, one location, St Louis School, is a few hundred metres from The Belcher’s; a large warehouse for imported goods once stood on the opposite side of the road.
 |
| Brooke's Gecko from Hong Kong Amphibians and Reptiles - see below |
James Brooke is buried in the churchyard of St Leonard's, Sheepstor, on the edge of Dartmoor: I tooke these photographs in September 2012:
 |
| Memorial Plaque to the Brooke Rajahs of Sarawak |
*Belcher’s Battery and then Belcher’s Gardens were overlooked by the main teaching laboratory cum museum of the zoology department of the University of Hong Kong when it was in the now-demolished Northcote Science Building.
Gray JE. 1845. Catalogue of the specimens of lizards in the collection of the British Museum. London: Trustees of the British Museum/Edward Newman.
Karsen SJ, Lau M W-N, Bogadek A. 1998. Hong Kong Amphibians and Reptiles. Second Edition. Hong Kong: Provisional Urban Council. ISBN 962-7849-05-7
No comments:
Post a Comment