Anonymous*, Bismarck Archipelago

 

(Source: Flora Malesiana ser. 1, 1: Cyclopaedia of collectors)

 

The Department of Agriculture, Rabaul, New Britain (Bismarck Archipelago), sent orchids to Hort. Bog. [BO] in 1935.

The New Guinea Department of Agriculture collected plants in New Britain (cf. Journ. Arn. Arbor. 22, 1941, p. 93).

 

(*) Anonymous collectors are numerous in the Malaysian collections. Many of them were officials whose names can only be traced with difficulty or not at all, and who, in all probability, often did not collect in the field themselves.

Some large collections were made by native collectors whose names are not noted (e.g. from Borneo). Further there are quite a number of totally anonymous collections, of which we have not the faintest idea who made them. The anonymous collections cannot be neglected; some are very large e.g. the ‘Native Collector(s)’ employed by the Bureau of Science in Borneo. Some are very important, and contained a lot of novelties, e.g. the grasses collected by veterinary surgeons in Soemba Isl. (L.S.I.). Sometimes duplicates were distributed of well-known collections with totally inadequate labels, specially of the old collections; these duplicates are now often ‘anonymous’. The anonymous collections have been annoying for the present compiler. They are here arranged geographically and chronologically.