Gerard Thijsse
From Deshima Von Siebold sent several shipments with natural history objects to Batavia. Already in 1825 he sent at least one case with dried plants from Deshima with the ship Vasco di Gama. This case contained ca. 300 specimens in 200 species (photocopy of a list titled: Overzigt van de Natuurzeldzaamheden sedert de Jaren 1824 tot 1827 van Japan naar Batavia aan het Gouvernement gezonden. Original probably in the National Archive). The original list of plants belonging to this case is written by Bürger, and is preserved in the archives of the Ruhr University in Bochum (Schmidt, 1989: 176).
At that time the Rijksherbarium did not exist yet and these plants, together with the zoological specimens, will have been sent to the Natural History Museum in Leiden. It is not clear what became of these plants. In Leiden only very few Siebold collections were found bearing the date 1825. These specimens may have belonged to this shipment.
As is well known Von Siebold was ordered to return to Java at the end of 1828, but Japanese officials found out that he possessed forbidden objects and he was imprisoned on Deshima. At the end of 1829 he was expelled from Japan.
All the natural history collections he had collected before his house arrest (so in the period 1823-1828), including his herbarium, were packed, and sent with the ship Cornelis Houtman to Batavia in the beginning of 1829. According to a list (August 31, 1829, photocopy at Naturalis) concerning this shipment, the following botanical collections were on board:
In total this herbarium counted 2,000 species in 12,000 specimens.
When on Java, the complete shipment was checked and repacked and sent to the Netherlands in various shipments. Von Siebold's herbarium was shipped to the Netherlands separate from his collection of living plants. The herbarium collections were already sent to the Netherlands when the living collections were ready to be shipped (list May 24, 1829). When these herbarium collections arrived at the Natural History Museum in Leiden in September 1829, they were transferred to the Rijksherbarium in Brussels (letter September 21, 1829). Here they will have been waiting to be unpacked when the Belgian revolt started.
When Von Siebold left Japan at the end of December 1829, with the ship the Java, he took with him the herbarium specimens he had assembled during his last year of his stay on Deshima. In January he arrives at Batavia, with the herbarium he had personally dried. It consisted of 1,200 species in 4,000 specimens and some contributions of Japanese friends, consisting mainly of cryptogamic plants (100 species in 150 specimens, collected by Okochi Sonsin) and some rare fruits, dried or in arack.
Because Von Siebold's freedom to act was limited during the last year of his stay on Deshima, the herbarium specimens Von Siebold had brought together during this period must have come either from the fodder for his goat, or have been collected by Bürger. Bürger was a German pharmacist who came to Deshima in 1825 to assist Von Siebold with his natural history research. When Von Bürger had taken over the natural history studies from Von Siebold in 1828, they both agreed that Von Siebold would identify the plants Bürger was going to collect, in exchange for a duplicate specimen (letter August 15, 1864).
When Von Siebold arrived in Antwerp in July 1830, with the natural history collection assembled during his confinement in 1829, he stored his ethnographical collections in Antwerp. The living plants were sent to the botanical garden at Gent and the herbarium collections to the recently founded Rijksherbarium in Brussels.
Because of the Belgian revolt the collections in Brussels incurred the risk of being destroyed, therefore Von Siebold got permission of the Dutch Ministry of the Interior to safeguard his collections. Blume's assistant in Brussels, Dr. Fischer already had decided to pack all collections in cases and have them transported to Gent. On the quay in Gent the rebels seized these cases, and it was Von Siebold who convinced them that these cases only contained collections of dried plants with no other value than a scientific one. From Gent they were sent by ship to Rotterdam and from there to Leiden. In this way Von Siebold not only played an important role in saving his own collection, but also that of the Rijksherbarium.
When Von Siebold visited Blume in Brussels just after his return to the Netherlands, he soon concluded that Blume was not his friend. He therefore decided to keep behind the botanical collections he had assembled during his confinement, which he considered his private property (letter August 15, 1864). These collections were packed in two cases. This is why only the collections Von Siebold had made in the period 1823-1828 were sent to the Rijksherbarium in Leiden. The two cases Von Siebold had kept behind he stored in his house on the Rapenburg. This was the start of a conflict that lasted many years between these two men, until Blume's death in 1862. Because Von Siebold had written a long public letter in 1864, in which he answers to the Minister of the Interior for the Japanese plants he had kept back and the plants he considered his private property, we know what according to him was packed in these two cases (letter August 15, 1864):
Blume kept insisting that the specimens in these two cases were the property of the government and should be handed over to him. In 1837 Von Siebold was more or less forced to do so, and in 1839 he decided to donate the contents of these two cases, together with some objects already in the possession of Blume. What Von Siebold thought these objects were we also know from the same public letter:
Not mentioned is a Japanese herbarium donated to Von Siebold by Katsuragawa Hoken.
After Von Siebold had left Deshima, his assistant Bürger carried on the natural history studies, and stayed on Deshima till the end of 1832. In this period he has sent dried plants to Leiden. He then went to Java (MacLean, 1975: 54). According to Von Siebold the collections Bürger had sent to the Rijksherbarium in the period 1829-1832, were collected in the botanical garden on Deshima and around Nagasaki (letter August 15, 1864).
In August 1834 Bürger returned to Japan for a short period (MacLean, 1975: 56). At the end of that year he sent a shipment of natural history specimens to Batavia. With this shipment was a herbarium collection of almost 1,000 species, collected in duplicate (list November 1834). These plants arrived in Leiden in 1835.
After Bürger's departure from Japan on December 1, 1834, two Japanese (Magoeits and Toské or Foské), who already had been active under Bürger, continued the natural history researches and looked after the botanical garden on Deshima. (MacLean, 1975: 58-59). By January 1836, six cases with dried plants and seeds from Japan arrived on Java. Bürger, who was on there, sent them after inspection to the Rijksherbarium in Leiden (MacLean, 1975: 59; 1978: 52). These plants might have been collected by these two Japanese.
After his return from Japan, when Von Siebold was living in Leiden, he still received botanical specimens from his Japanese students, In 1832 Ishii Soken, one of his students who also made part of the court journey in 1826, had send him a parcel with c. 30 dried plants (3) (letter November 19, 1860).
In Leiden he also received a fourth volume of the herbarium of Hirai Kaiso (letter August 15, 1864), and when Bürger was visiting the Netherlands in 1840 he gave Von Siebold a collection of Japanese plants (4) (Kalkman, 1987, appendix 3: 7). Blume must have got wind of this, because in 1847 he brings Von Siebold into mind his promise to donate these plants to the Rijksherbarium (letter August 15, 1864). It is not known what Von Siebold has done with the plants Bürger had given him. Since his return from Japan Von Siebold must have donated more than 1,000 plants to the Rijksherbarium (letter November 19, 1860), but these are probably not the plants collected by Bürger, but specimens collected by A.A. Bunge (1803-1890) (5).
In 1845 an advertisement appeared in the German botanical Journal “Flora”, in which Japanese plants were put up for sale by H. Göring (Göring, 1845: 527-528). He had received these plants from his brother F. Göring in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1844. According to the advertisement this collection contained Japanese plants not even present in the Leiden herbarium. This may be true as H.G. Reichenbach (1824-1889) described some new species of orchids from this collection (Reichenbach f., 1845: 333-335). On the other hand Zuccarini stated that he had not found any plants not yet present in Leiden in a selection of this collection sent to him by H.G. von Steudel (1783-1856) (Zuccarini, 1846: 33). These Japanese plants were collected by Von Siebold and Bürger (Göring, 1850: 608). Also Zuccarini had bought a collection of plants from Göring (6). On the first page of a list Zuccarini had made of the plants he had bought, Von Siebold had written that these plants were nothing else than the plants collected by Bürger which he had left behind in Batavia (Jakarta) (Schmidt, 1989: 171). As Von Siebold had left these plants in Batavia, they must have been collected before 1830. To J.A. Wagner, the guardian of Zuccarini's children, Von Siebold wrote that Göring's herbarium consisted of plants which were left on Java and which were sold by Bürger's solicitor without his knowledge (letter February 23, 1849).
A few years later Blume complains about the fact that Zollinger offers for sale large collections of Javanese plants, lately even Japanese plants (Blume, 1847). The Japanese plants Blume is referring to must have been the plants Zollinger had found in the botanical garden in Buitenzorg, where they were left to deteriorate. Zollinger had offered to arrange these collection in exchange for part of the duplicates. According to Zollinger his Japanese plants and those of Göring, all came from the same source (Zollinger 1854: viii-ix). So not only the Göring collections, but also those of Zollinger actually have been collected by Bürger.
The conflict between Blume and Von Siebold about the ownership of parts of the Japanese collections temporarily ended in 1839, because from then on they both had a mutual interest in a horticultural society they had established that year. In that same year Von Siebold also gave up his claims on some Japanese objects already in the possession of Blume and he donated his herbarium to the State. Pierot, who had been Blume's assistant at the Rijksherbarium, was sent to Japan by Blume and Von Siebold to collect plants for their society, but he died on his way to Japan in 1841. Nevertheless many specimens in the Herbarium Japonicum occur which, according to the labels, are collected by Pierot in Japan. In the archive of the National Herbarium of the Netherlands, there is a letter which proves that this collection was bought from G. Bisschop in 1844. These plants, around 1,000 specimens, Pierot had bought on Java in 1841 for 300 Dutch Guilders (letter January 29, 1844). It is tempting to suppose that also these plants came from the same source as those of Zollinger and Göring, and that Bürger had collected them. In fact Miquel attributes these specimens to Bürger on the first pages of his Prolusio.
These so-called Pierot specimens all bear nicely written labels with collecting data, which are usually lacking on the specimens collected by Von Siebold, Bürger, Textor, and Mohnike. As many of the collecting localities are places along the route of the court journey, the collector of these specimens must have been a member of one of them. In case these specimens have been collected by Bürger, he must have done so during the court journey of 1826. It is however not likely that Von Siebold had permitted Bürger to collect and keep such a collection for himself. At that time he was still his assistant. When these plants have been collected during the later court journey of 1830, they can not be Bürger's. Although Bürger wanted to join the court journey of 1830 the Japanese officials (H. Beukers, pers. comm.) did not allow him to. Perhaps it was Von Siebold's other assistant, the skilful draftsman C.H. de Villeneuve, who collected these specimens during the court journey of 1830.
In 1843 the Javanese government decided to terminate the natural history studies researches in Japan because of the little scientific value of the collected specimens (MacLean, 1975: 68), but still dried plant specimens came to Leiden. Textor had succeeded Pierot as a collector for Von Siebold's society and stayed in Japan between 1843 and 1845. The collections he made during this period, he will have taken with him when he returned to the Netherlands. According to a note in the archives of the National Herbarium (November 27, 1845), Blume already had received six parcels of dried plants collected by Textor in 1845. The question why these plants were sent to the Rijksherbarium and not to Von Siebold, who had paid Textor for collecting plants in Japan, is not answered yet.
In 1846 Textor returned to Java at his own expense, and from 1856-1859 he was in Japan again. In 1859 he was discharged (Steenis-Kruseman, 1950). According to the annual report for the year 1859/1860, the Rijksherbarium had bought 4,450 specimens, collected by Textor. In the same report it is mentioned that these collections were acquired for a relatively small amount of money, and that these plants were collected during the court journey (Blume, 1860). Because Textor made part of the court journey of 1844 (MacLean, 1978: 66), at least part of the collection bought then must have been collected at that occasion. They can not be collected during a later court journey, as Textor's second stay in Japan was in the period 1856-1859, and the last court journey was held in 1850 (pers. comm. H. Beukers). The importation of Japanese plants to Europe for Von Siebold's society was not very profitable, and after Textor had left Deshima no successor was appointed.
Mohnike was the first station doctor since Von Siebold and stayed in Japan from 1848-1851. As official for the natural history sciences he was in charge of the study and collecting of natural history materials. For this purpose he received an extra allowance. That Mohnike had a keen interest in natural history is evident. In a letter to Von Siebold he asked to be informed about gaps in the Leiden collections (Beukers, 2002). He took part in the last court journey in 1850. It was Teysmann, the curator of the botanical garden at Buitenzorg (Bogor), who sent the Japanese herbarium collections of Mohnike to the Rijksherbarium in 1865 (Miquel, 1865).
During the second half of the 19th century the Dutch lost their leading role among overseas countries in Japan and other countries like England, the U.S. and Russia sent expeditions to Japan to collect natural history specimens. From now on the Leiden Japanese collections were enlarged by donations from foreign institutions such as Kew, St. Petersburg and the Smitsonian.
In 1864 Kew donated 1,200 plants collected by the British botanist Oldham (Miquel, 1864). The Japanese plants belonging to this gift were collected around Nagasaki in 1862.
In 1865 Asa Gray and the Smithonian Institution donated Japanese plants collected during the North American expeditions (Miquel, 1865). During the U.S. Japan Expedition (1852-1854) S. Wells Williams of the American Mission at Macao and James Morrow collected plants in Japan. The expedition physician Charles Wright (1811-1885) and I. Small collected during the U.S. North Pacific Exploring Expedition (1853-1856). In contradiction to what I have written earlier (Thijsse, 2000: 16) on the authority of Miquel, it seems that no specimens are present collected by Williams and Morrow. Until now only specimens have been found collected by Wright during the U.S. North Pacific Exploring Expedition (1853-1856).
In 1866 St. Petersburg donated a collection made by Maximowicz during his three year stay in Japan (Miquel, 1866). The next year more Japanese plants were sent from St. Petersburg to Leiden (Miquel, 1867). In 1873 (7) the herbarium again received 229 Japanese plants from St. Petersburg (Suringar, 1873), and this institute sent another 240 Japanese plants in 1876/1877 (written annual report 1876/1877).
According to the annual report of the year 1871 Suringar had sent for Japanese algae (Suringar, 1871). In 1872 he donated a collection Japanese ferns, and some algae to the Rijksherbarium (Suringar, 1872). These collections will have been the collections made by Tanaka Yoshiwo for Gratama. Gratama stayed in Japan from 1866 to 1871 and is considered one of the founding fathers of chemistry in Japan. Tanaka Yoshiwo collected botanical specimens for Gratama (letter May 4, 1871). In a letter (dated February 16, 1871) Gratama had sent to Suringar from Kobe, he wrote that he had sent algae to Suringar and that he had asked Tanaka to sent the earlier promised specimens. In March 1868 Gratama was stationed for some months in Yokohama. According to Von Römer (1921: 145) it was in this period that Gratama collected algae, seeds, bulbs, plants and trees, which he has sent to the Leiden botanical garden at his own expense.