Alice B. Emerson - "Ruth Fielding at the War Front"

Robert Bloomfield - "The Farmer's Boy"

George Eliot - "O May I Join the Choir Invisible!"

Guibert of Nogent - "The Deeds of God through the Franks"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Malay Archipelago Volume 1

b >> by Alfred Russell Wallace >> The Malay Archipelago Volume 1




The higher peaks of the Alps, and even of the Pyrenees, contain a
number of plants absolutely identical with those of Lapland, but
nowhere found in the intervening plains. On the summit of the
White Mountains, in the United States, every plant is identical
with species growing in Labrador. In these cases all ordinary
means of transport fail. Most of the plants have heavy seeds,
which could not possibly be carried such immense distances by the
wind; and the agency of birds in so effectually stocking these
Alpine heights is equally out of the question. The difficulty was
so great, that some naturalists were driven to believe that these
species were all separately created twice over on these distant
peaks. The determination of a recent glacial epoch, however, soon
offered a much more satisfactory solution, and one that is now
universally accepted by men of science. At this period, when the
mountains of Wales were full of glaciers, and the mountainous
parts of Central Europe, and much of America north of the great
lakes, were covered with snow and ice, and had a climate
resembling that of Labrador and Greenland at the present day, an
Arctic flora covered all these regions. As this epoch of cold
passed away, and the snowy mantle of the country, with the
glaciers that descended from every mountain summit, receded up
their slopes and towards the north pole, the plants receded also,
always clinging as now to the margins of the perpetual snow line.
Thus it is that the same species are now found on the summits of
the mountains of temperate Europe and America, and in the barren
north-polar regions.

But there is another set of facts, which help us on another step
towards the case of the Javanese mountain flora. On the higher
slopes of the Himalayas, on the tops of the mountains of Central
India and of Abyssinia, a number of plants occur which, though
not identical with those of European mountains, belong to the
same genera, and are said by botanists to represent them; and
most of these could not exist in the warm intervening plains. Mr.
Darwin believes that this class of facts can be explained in the
same way; for, during the greatest severity of the glacial epoch,
temperate forms of plants will have extended to the confines of
the tropics, and on its departure, will have retreated up these
southern mountains, as well as northward to the plains and hills
of Europe. But in this case, the time elapsed, and the great
change of conditions, have allowed many of these plants to become
so modified that we now consider them to be distinct species. A
variety of other facts of a similar nature have led him to
believe that the depression of temperature was at one time
sufficient to allow a few north-temperate plants to cross the
Equator (by the most elevated routes) and to reach the Antarctic
regions, where they are now found. The evidence on which this
belief rests will be found in the latter part of Chapter II. of
the "Origin of Species"; and, accepting it for the present as an
hypothesis, it enables us to account for the presence of a flora
of European type on the volcanoes of Java.

It will, however, naturally be objected that there is a wide
expanse of sea between Java and the continent, which would have
effectually prevented the immigration of temperate fortes of
plants during the glacial epoch. This would undoubtedly be a
fatal objection, were there not abundant evidence to show that
Java has been formerly connected with Asia, and that the union
must have occurred at about the epoch required. The most striking
proof of such a junction is, that the great Mammalia of Java, the
rhinoceros, the tiger, and the Banteng or wild ox, occur also in
Siam and Burmah, and these would certainly not have been
introduced by man. The Javanese peacock and several other birds
are also common to these two countries; but, in the majority of
cases, the species are distinct, though closely allied,
indicating that a considerable time (required for such
modification) has elapsed since the separation, while it has not
been so long as to cause an entire change. Now this exactly
corresponds with the time we should require since the temperate
forms of plants entered Java. These are now almost distinct
species, but the changed conditions under which they are now
forced to exist, and the probability of some of them having since
died out on the continent of India, sufficiently accounts for the
Javanese species being different.

In my more special pursuits, I had very little success upon the
mountain--owing, perhaps, to the excessively unpropitious
weather and the shortness of my stay. At from 7,000 to 8,000 feet
elevation, I obtained one of almost lovely of the small Fruit
pigeons (Ptilonopus roseicollis), whose entire head and neck are
of an exquisite rosy pink colour, contrasting finely with its
otherwise blue plumage; and on the very summit, feeding on the
ground among the strawberries that have been planted there, I
obtained a dull-coloured thrush, with the form and habits of a
starling (Turdus fumidus). Insects were almost entirely absent,
owing no doubt to the extreme dampness, and I did not get a
single butterfly the whole trip; yet I feel sure that, during the
dry season, a week's residence on this mountain would well repay
the collector in every department of natural history.

After my return to Toego, I endeavoured to find another locality
to collect in, and removed to a coffee-plantation some miles to
the north, and tried in succession higher and lower stations on
the mountain; but, I never succeeded in obtaining insects in any
abundance and birds were far less plentiful than on the
Megamendong Mountan. The weather now became more rainy than ever,
and as the wet season seemed to have set in in earnest, I
returned to Batavia, packed up and sent off my collections, and
left by steamer on November 1st for Banca and Sumatra.

CHAPTER VIII.

SUMATRA.

(NOVEMBER 1861 to JANUARY 1862.)

The mail steamer from Batavia to Singapore took me to Muntok (or
as on English maps, "Minto"), the chief town and port of Banca.
Here I stayed a day or two, until I could obtain a boat to take me
across the straits, and all the river to Palembang. A few walks
into the country showed me that it was very hilly, and full of
granitic and laterite rocks, with a dry and stunted forest
vegetation; and I could find very few insects. A good-sized open
sailing-boat took me across to the mouth of the Palembang river
where, at a fishing village, a rowing-boat was hired to take me up
to Palembang--a distance of nearly a hundred miles by water.
Except when the wind was strong and favourable we could only
proceed with the tide, and the banks of the river were generally
flooded Nipa-swamps, so that the hours we were obliged to lay at
anchor passed very heavily. Reaching Palembang on the 8th of
November, I was lodged by the Doctor, to whom I had brought a
letter of introduction, and endeavoured to ascertain where I
could find a good locality for collecting. Everyone assured me
that I should have to go a very long way further to find any dry
forest, for at this season the whole country for many miles
inland was flooded. I therefore had to stay a week at Palembang
before I could determine my future movements.

The city is a large one, extending for three or four miles along
a fine curve of the river, which is as wide as the Thames at
Greenwich. The stream is, however, much narrowed by the houses
which project into it upon piles, and within these, again, there
is a row of houses built upon great bamboo rafts, which are
moored by rattan cables to the shore or to piles, and rise and
fall with the tide.

The whole riverfront on both sides is chiefly formed of such
houses, and they are mostly shops open to the water, and only
raised a foot above it, so that by taking a small boat it is easy
to go to market and purchase anything that is to be had in
Palembang. The natives are true Malays, never building a house on
dry land if they can find water to set it in, and never going
anywhere on foot if they can reach the place in a heat. A
considerable portion of the population are Chinese and Arabs, who
carry on all the trade; while the only Europeans are the civil
and military officials of the Dutch Government. The town is
situated at the head of the delta of the river, and between it
and the sea there is very little ground elevated above highwater
mark; while for many miles further inland, the banks of the main
stream and its numerous tributaries are swampy, and in the wet
season hooded for a considerable distance. Palembang is built on
a patch of elevated ground, a few miles in extent, on the north
bank of the river. At a spot about three miles from the town this
turns into a little hill, the top of which is held sacred by the
natives, shaded by some fine trees,and inhabited by a colony
of squirrels which have become half-tame. On holding out a few
crumbs of bread or any fruit, they come running down the trunk,
take the morsel out of your fingers, and dart away instantly.
Their tails are carried erect, and the hair, which is ringed with
grey, yellow, and brown, radiates uniformly around them, and
looks exceedingly pretty. They have somewhat of the motions of
mice, coming on with little starts, and gazing intently with
their large black eyes before venturing to advance further. The
manner in which Malays often obtain the confidence of wild
animals is a very pleasing trait in their character, and is due
in some degree to the quiet deliberation of their manners, and
their love of repose rather than of action. The young are
obedient to the wishes of their elders, and seem to feel none of
that propensity to mischief which European boys exhibit. How long
would tame squirrels continue to inhabit trees in the vicinity of
an English village, even if close to the church? They would soon
be pelted and driven away, or snared and confined in a whirling
cage. I have never heard of these pretty animals being tamed in
this way in England, but I should think it might be easily done
in any gentleman's park, and they would certainly be as pleasing
and attractive as they would be uncommon.

After many inquiries, I found that a day's journey by water above
Palembang there commenced a military road which extended up to
the mountains and even across to Bencoolen, and I determined to
take this route and travel on until I found some tolerable
collecting ground. By this means I should secure dry land and a
good road, and avoid the rivers, which at this season are very
tedious to ascend owing to the powerful currents, and very
unproductive to the collector owing to most of the lands in their
vicinity being underwater. Leaving early in the morning we did
not reach Lorok, the village where the road begins, until late at
night. I stayed there a few days, but found that most all the
ground in the vicinity not underwater was cultivated, and that
the only forest was in swamps which were now inaccessible. The
only bird new to me which I obtained at Lorok was the fine long-
tailed parroquet (Palaeornis longicauda). The people here assured
me that the country was just the same as this for a very long
way--more than a week's journey, and they seemed hardly to have
any conception of an elevated forest-clad country, so that I
began to think it would be useless going on, as the time at my
disposal was too short to make it worth my while to spend much
more of it in moving about. At length, however, I found a man who
knew the country, and was more intelligent; and he at once told
me that if I wanted forest I must go to the district of Rembang,
which I found on inquiry was about twenty-five or thirty miles
off.

The road is divided into regular stages of ten or twelve miles
each, and, without sending on in advance to have coolies ready,
only this distance can be travelled in a day. At each station
there are houses for the accommodation of passengers, with
cooking-house and stables, and six or eight men always on guard.
There is an established system for coolies at fixed rates, the
inhabitants of the surrounding villages all taking their turn to
be subject to coolie service, as well as that of guards at the
station for five days at a time. This arrangement makes
travelling very easy, and was a great convenience for me. I had a
pleasant walk of ten or twelve miles in the morning, and the rest
of the day could stroll about and explore the village and
neighbourhood, having a house ready to occupy without any
formalities whatever. In three days I reached Moera-dua, the
first village in Rembang, and finding the country dry and
undulating, with a good sprinkling of forest, I determined to
remain a short time and try the neighbourhood. Just opposite the
station was a small but deep river, and a good bathing-place; and
beyond the village was a fine patch of forest, through which the
road passed, overshadowed by magnificent trees, which partly
tempted me to stay; but after a fortnight I could find no good
place for insects, and very few birds different from the common
species of Malacca. I therefore moved on another stage to Lobo
Raman, where the guard-house is situated quite by itself in the
forest, nearly a mile from each of three villages. This was very
agreeable to me, as I could move about without having every
motion watched by crowds of men, women and children, and I had
also a much greater variety of walks to each of the villages and
the plantations around them.

The villages of the Sumatran Malays are somewhat peculiar and
very picturesque. A space of some acres is surrounded with a high
fence, and over this area the houses are thickly strewn without
the least attempt at regularity. Tall cocoa-nut trees grow
abundantly between them, and the ground is bare and smooth with
the trampling of many feet. The houses are raised about six feet
on posts, the best being entirely built of planks, others of
bamboo. The former are always more or less ornamented with
carving and have high-pitched roofs and overhanging eaves. The
gable ends and all the chief posts and beams are sometimes
covered with exceedingly tasteful carved work, and this is still
more the case in the district of Menangkabo, further west. The
floor is made of split bamboo, and is rather shaky, and there is
no sign of anything we should call furniture. There are no
benches or chairs or stools, but merely the level floor covered
with mats, on which the inmates sit or lie. The aspect of the
village itself is very neat, the ground being often swept before
the chief houses; but very bad odours abound, owing to there
being under every house a stinking mud-hole, formed by all waste
liquids and refuse matter, poured down through the floor above.
In most other things Malays are tolerably clean--in some
scrupulously so; and this peculiar and nasty custom, which is
almost universal, arises, I have little doubt, from their having
been originally a maritime and water-loving people, who built
their houses on posts in the water, and only migrated gradually
inland, first up the rivers and streams, and then into the dry
interior. Habits which were at once so convenient and so cleanly,
and which had been so long practised as to become a portion of
the domestic life of the nation, were of course continued when
the first settlers built their houses inland; and without a
regular system of drainage, the arrangement of the villages is
such that any other system would be very inconvenient.

In all these Sumatran villages I found considerable difficulty in
getting anything to eat. It was not the season for vegetables,
and when, after much trouble, I managed to procure some yams of a
curious variety, I found them hard and scarcely eatable. Fowls
were very scarce; and fruit was reduced to one of the poorest
kinds of banana. The natives (during the wet season at least)
live exclusively on rice, as the poorer Irish do on potatoes. A
pot of rice cooked very dry and eaten with salt and red peppers,
twice a day, forms their entire food during a large part of the
year. This is no sign of poverty, but is simply custom; for their
wives and children are loaded with silver armlets from wrist to
elbow, and carry dozens of silver coins strung round their necks
or suspended from their ears.

As I had moved away from Palembang, I had found the Malay spoken
by the common people less and less pure, until at length it became
quite unintelligible, although the continual recurrence of many
well-known words assured me it was a form of Malay, and enabled
me to guess at the main subject of conversation. This district
had a very bad reputation a few years ago, and travellers were
frequently robbed and murdered. Fights between village and
village were also of frequent occurrence, and many lives were
lost, owing to disputes about boundaries or intrigues with women.
Now, however, since the country has been divided into districts
under "Controlleurs," who visit every village in turn to hear
complaints and settle disputes, such things are heard of no more.
This is one of the numerous examples I have met with of the good
effects of the Dutch Government. It exercises a strict
surveillance over its most distant possessions, establishes a
form of government well adapted to the character of the people,
reforms abuses, punishes crimes, and makes itself everywhere
respected by the native population.

Lobo Raman is a central point of the east end of Sumatra, being
about a hundred and twenty miles from the sea to the east, north,
and west. The surface is undulating, with no mountains or even
hills, and there is no rock, the soil being generally a red
pliable clay. Numbers of small streams and rivers intersect the
country, and it is pretty equally divided between open clearings
and patches of forest, both virgin and second growth, with
abundance of fruit trees; and there is no lack of paths to get
about in any direction. Altogether it is the very country that
would promise most for a naturalist, and I feel sure that at a
more favourable time of year it would prove exceedingly rich; but
it was now the rainy season, when, in the very best of
localities, insects are always scarce, and there being no fruit
on the trees, there was also a scarcity of birds. During a month's
collecting, I added only three or four new species to my list of
birds, although I obtained very fine specimens of many which were
rare and interesting. In butterflies I was rather more
successful, obtaining several fine species quite new to me, and a
considerable number of very rare and beautiful insects. I will
give here some account of two species of butterflies, which,
though very common in collections, present us with peculiarities
of the highest interest.

The first is the handsome Papilio memnon, a splendid butterfly of
a deep black colour, dotted over with lines and groups of scales
of a clear ashy blue. Its wings are five inches in expanse, and
the hind wings are rounded, with scalloped edges. This applies to
the males; but the females are very different, and vary so much
that they were once supposed to form several distinct species.
They may be divided into two groups--those which resemble the
male in shape, and, those which differ entirely from him in the
outline of the wings. The first vary much in colour, being often
nearly white with dusky yellow and red markings, but such
differences often occur in butterflies. The second group are much
more extraordinary, and would never be supposed to be the same
insect, since the hind wings are lengthened out into large spoon-
shaped tails, no rudiment of which is ever to be perceived in the
males or in the ordinary form of females. These tailed females
are never of the dark and blue-glossed tints which prevail in the
male and often occur in the females of the same form, but are
invariably ornamented with stripes and patches of white or buff,
occupying the larger part of the surface of the hind wings. This
peculiarity of colouring led me to discover that this
extraordinary female closely resembles (when flying) another
butterfly of the same genus but of a different group (Papilio
coön), and that we have here a case of mimicry similar to those
so well illustrated and explained by Mr. Bates.[ Trans. Linn.
Soc. vol. xviii. p. 495; "Naturalist on the Amazons," vol. i. p.
290.]

That the resemblance is not accidental is sufficiently
proved by the fact, that in the North of India, where Papilio
coön is replaced by all allied forms, (Papilio Doubledayi) having
red spots in place of yellow, a closely-allied species or variety
of Papilio memnon (P. androgens) has the tailed female also red
spotted. The use and reason of this resemblance appears to be
that the butterflies imitated belong to a section of the genus
Papilio which from some cause or other are not attacked by birds,
and by so closely resembling these in form and colour the female
of Memnon and its ally, also escape persecution. Two other
species of this same section (Papilio antiphus and Papilio
polyphontes) are so closely imitated by two female forms of
Papilio tbeseus (which comes in the same section with Memnon),
that they completely deceived the Dutch entomologist De Haan, and
he accordingly classed them as the same species!

But the most curious fact connected with these distinct forms is
that they are both the offspring of either form. A single brood
of larva were bred in Java by a Dutch entomologist, and produced
males as well as tailed and tailless females, and there is every
reason to believe that this is always the case, and that forms
intermediate in character never occur. To illustrate these
phenomena, let us suppose a roaming Englishman in some remote island
to have two wives--one a black-haired/ red-skinned Indian, the other a
woolly-headed/ sooty-skinned negress; and that instead of the
children being mulattoes of brown or dusky tints, mingling the
characteristics of each parent in varying degrees, all the boys
should be as fair-skinned and blue-eyed as their father, while
the girls should altogether resemble their mothers. This would be
thought strange enough, but the case of these butterflies is yet
more extraordinary, for each mother is capable not only of
producing male offspring like the father, and female like
herself, but also other females like her fellow wife, and
altogether differing from herself!

The other species to which I have to direct attention is the
Kallima paralekta, a butterfly of the same family group as our
Purple Emperor, and of about the same size or larger. Its upper
surface is of a rich purple, variously tinged with ash colour,
and across the forewings there is a broad bar of deep orange, so
that when on the wing it is very conspicuous. This species was
not uncommon in dry woods and thickets, and I often endeavoured
to capture it without success, for after flying a short distance
it would enter a bush among dry or dead leaves, and however
carefully I crept up to the spot I could never discover it until
it would suddenly start out again and then disappear in a similar
place. If at length I was fortunate enough to see the exact spot
where the butterfly settled, and though I lost sight of it for
some time, I would discover that it was close before my eyes, but
that in its position of repose it so closely resembled a dead leaf
attached to a twig as almost certainly to deceive the eye even when
gazing full upon it. I captured several specimens on the wing, and
was able fully to understand the way in which this wonderful resemblance
is produced.

The end of the upper wings terminates in a fine point, just as
the leaves of many tropical shrubs and trees are pointed, while
the lower wings are somewhat more obtuse, and are lengthened out
into a short thick tail. Between these two points there runs a
dark curved line exactly representing the midrib of a leaf, and
from this radiate on each side a few oblique marks which well
imitate the lateral veins. These marks are more clearly seen on
the outer portion of the base of the wings, and on the innerside
towards the middle and apex, and they are produced by striae and
markings which are very common in allied species, but which are
here modified and strengthened so as to imitate more exactly the
venation of a leaf. The tint of the undersurface varies much,
but it is always some ashy brown or reddish colour, which matches
with those of dead leaves. The habit of the species is always to
rest on a twig and among dead or dry leaves, and in this position
with the wings closely pressed together, their outline is exactly
that of a moderately-sized leaf, slightly curved or shrivelled.
The tail of the hind wings forms a perfect stalk, and touches the
stick while the insect is supported by the middle pair of legs,
which are not noticed among the twigs and fibres that surround
it. The head and antennae are drawn back between the wings so as
to be quite concealed, and there is a little notch hollowed out
at the very base of the wings, which allows the head to be
retracted sufficiently. All these varied details combine to
produce a disguise that is so complete and marvellous as to
astonish everyone who observes it; and the habits of the insects
are such as to utilize all these peculiarities, and render them
available in such a manner as to remove all doubt of the purpose
of this singular case of mimicry, which is undoubtedly a
protection to the insect.

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