Introduction

The data associated with a large collection of birds, nearly 850 specimens, supposedly obtained from nearly every small island along the western Pacific coast of Panama (Veragua Archipelago of Olson, 1997; see fig. 1) by the commercial collector J. H. Batty in 1902 and sold to Walter Rothschild have long been regarded as suspicious (see History below). This collection also contained more than 230 mammals and an undetermined number of insects with the same collection data but whose provenance has not heretofore been questioned. Batty was the first person to collect birds and mammals on the very large island of Coiba, which is now known to harbor a rich diversity of endemic taxa of birds. Yet problems were also identified with some of Batty's specimens from that island as well. Most of the birds came to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in 1932 with the purchase of the Rothschild collection (Murphy, 1932), whereas the mammals and insects, along with some hummingbird nests and eggs and “associated” skins, went to the Natural History Museum, London (BMNH). Batty also made extensive collections in mainland Chiriquí at Boqueron in the lowlands and Boquete in the highlands. No specimens with mainland locality data were sold to Rothschild and these series went mainly to AMNH and to the Field Museum, Chicago (FMNH).

Figure 1

Map of the Veragua Archipelago with the names of islands as used by J. H. Batty on specimens labeled as collected in 1902 (in small caps). For current names of the islands see table 3. Isla Brincanco with unlabeled Isla Uva to the southeast make up the Islas Contreras mentioned in Batty's correspondence but not used on specimen labels.

I undertook an investigation of Batty's Panama collections to determine the extent to which his specimen data may be unreliable and to approximate what the correct data may be whenever they appeared to be questionable. Batty collected in the lowlands of western Panama before most of the forests were removed from that area, so his specimens from there, even if mislabeled, may retain considerable scientific and historical importance.

A Brief Biography of J. H. Batty

Joseph H. Batty (fig. 2) was a professional collector, hunter, and taxidermist who sold specimens to museums and private collectors in the latter part of the 19th century and up until his death in 1906. According to a note in the collector/donor file in the Division of Birds, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (USNM), he was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 3, 1847. Other biographical information comes mainly from two notices in The Auk (Anonymous, 1906a, 1906b) that were surely written by J. A. Allen, who was then editor of that journal and the curator at AMNH with the most direct dealings with Batty.

Figure 2

Joseph H. Batty in costume, from his book on Practical Taxidermy (Batty, 1880).

In 1873, Batty was a collector for the Hayden Survey in Colorado, and he collected with Elliott Coues in Montana as part of the Northern Boundary Commission Survey in 1874. Numerous specimens of birds and mammals at USNM date from this period. Following this, he was a taxidermist in New York City and wrote two popular books on hunting and taxidermy (Batty, 1878, 1880). He is said to have traveled extensively in tropical America and at one time was engaged in plume hunting (Anonymous, 1906a, 1906b).

In the late 1800s, Batty ran his business out of Sheepshead Bay, New York, according to the elaborate letterhead (fig. 3) that he used at the time, which proclaimed “We collect anything that walks, crawls, flies, swims or grows” (correspondence in the files of the Department of Ornithology, AMNH). Correspondence in 1902 with Rothschild and Ernst Hartert (originals in BMNH) placed Batty on 85th Street, New York City, not far from AMNH.

Figure 3

Letterhead of J. H. Batty's company in 1899.

Batty returned to active collecting about 1898, mainly in Colombia and Mexico in addition to his few months in Panama (then still part of Colombia) in 1901. In 1902, he was “commissioned to take charge of a collecting expedition in Mexico and Central America, under the direction of the American Museum of Natural History” at a salary of $2000.00 per annum (letter of agreement from AMNH president H. C. Bumpus, 27 Sept 1902, in AMNH archives). This activity kept him employed in Mexico for the next three and a half years. During this time, copies of correspondence from curator J. A. Allen to Batty consisted mainly of “nicely worded complaints about Batty's field practices (e.g., mismeasured and misnumbered specimens, difficulty in finding his locations on the map, jammed packing cases causing damaged specimens and collection of too many specimens)” (P. A. Brunauer, AMNH, in litt., 27 February 1997). On his last expedition, Batty was “killed instantly by the accidental discharge of his gun while collecting near Pijijiapan, in the southern part of the State of Chiapas, Mexico, on May 26, 1906” (Anonymous, 1906b: 356).

Materials and Methods

One of the main factors inhibiting an investigation of this sort is that there are no existing specimen registers for the Rothschild collection. Thus, there is no single volume one might consult to find the Batty material listed in a block. It was simply incorporated into the immense Rothschild collection (more than 280,000 birds), which, when transferred to AMNH in 1932, was arranged in systematic order and cataloged family by family. The only way to compile species lists for each island Batty visited and to reconstruct his itinerary is to go page by page through the 14 volumes of AMNH Rothschild catalogs and make a list of all Batty specimens, a task I undertook in December 1992. This was not too onerous considering that there are many families and genera that do not occur in Panama that could be passed over quickly, so the job took only about two days. I then made a file card for each specimen from any of the islands, including Coiba, so that these could be arranged by locality, or date, and, more importantly, taken into the collection and annotated after examining specimens. Eventually, in order to have information on the nature of the specimen labels themselves, I retrieved all the hundreds of Batty specimens from all the Panamanian islands, including Coiba, from the collections at AMNH and assembled them for study, which allowed comparison of different styles of specimen preparation, styles of labels, etc. I also obtained copies of the catalog entries for Batty specimens of birds and mammals at BMNH and the Field Museum, Chicago (FMNH) and for mammals at AMNH, although I have made no study of any of the specimens of mammals.

Batty's Itinerary in Panama in 1901–1902

Here I review the available evidence to reconstruct Batty's itinerary in Panama during the pertinent portions of 1901 and 1902 (table 1). Although no correspondence seems to exist to confirm it, Batty may have gone to Panama at Walter Rothschild's instigation, because Rothschild was interested in islands and Batty's first collecting station in Panama was Isla de Coiba, Panama's largest island and probably a high priority for Rothschild. As discussed below, there are a few specimens received from Batty labeled as from Chitra,Veraguas, with dates of 5–6 March 1901, and 17, 18, and 27 April 1901, but Batty made little attempt to disguise the fact that he obtained these from Enrique Arcé or one of his relatives and the dates are not considered reliable, particularly as the April dates overlap with those from specimens from Coiba.

Table 1

Chronology of Batty's Activities Relative to His Collections in Panama in 1901 and 1902 as Developed from Specimen Labels and Archived Correspondence Dubious or false dates are bracketed.

The first evidence now available for Batty's presence in Panama are the specimens obtained on Isla de Coiba, which bear dates ranging from 4 April to 27 June 1901. There are only single specimens for 4, 6, 7, and 8 April, one of which (Basileuterus) is of a mainland subspecies and therefore suspect. There are no Coiba specimens for 5 April or 9–15 April with the exception of two Coiba endemics labeled 12 April. Most of the specimens of Coiba endemics are labeled with dates of 16 to 27 April. There is a hiatus from 28 April through 2 May (except for one Cyanerpes on the 28th).

There are specimens of birds and mammals supposedly from Coiba labeled from 3 May through 29 June 1901, although there are 18 days in that period for which there are no specimens and another 11 for which there is only a single specimen. As discussed under Isla de Coiba, below, the June dates are highly suspicious and the same may apply to those with dates in May. It now appears that the amount of time Batty spent on Coiba may not have been much longer than the nearly two week period in April during which he obtained most of the specimens that are recognizably Coiba endemics.

In the Batty correspondence at BMNH is a list of 203 birds and 39 mammals “sent from J. H. Batty Coiba I. to Hon W. L. Rothschild” that is dated 29 June 1901 (table 2). Batty is unlikely to have trusted someone else to invoice, pack, and arrange for and pay shipping, so it is assumed that Batty had returned from Coiba to Panama City or Colón well before 29 June, the supposed date of his last specimen from Coiba (a Molossus). We know that this first shipment was received expeditiously because in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, published 30 December 1901, Rothschild (1901) named Leptotila battyi and in the same issue Hartert (1901) named Cyclorhis coibae and Aphantochroa cuvieri saturatior ( =  Cyclarhis gujanensis coibae and Phaeochroa cuvierii saturatior) based on the Batty material from Coiba. These are very distinctive taxa and the Batty collection contains examples of other subspecies now known to be endemic to Coiba, so there is no question that Batty actually obtained some birds on that island.

Table 2

List of Specimens from Isla de Coiba sent by Batty to Walter Rothschild, from a Copy in the Archives of BMNH This list of 203 birds and 39 mammals is dated 29 June 1901 and is headed “Specimens sent from J. H. Batty Coiba I. to Hon. W. L. Rothschild.” I have rearranged the sequence. Probable identities of birds are based on museum holdings. Mammal identifications are modified from Thomas (1902) and BMNH catalog records. ^*  =  there are now fewer specimens in the Rothschild collection at AMNH indicating that some may have been exchanged, sold, or discarded. ^§  =  there are now more specimens in the Rothschild collection at AMNH indicating acquisition of some in a subsequent shipment. The six specimens of King Vulture Sarcoramphus papa can be accounted for only by including four given to FMNH by Batty. Either Rothschild returned them to Batty or Batty did not include all six in the shipment. Rothschild apparently did not keep any of the shorebirds. Batty's “Mis”and “mis'”  =  miscellaneous. Some of these species do not actually occur on Coiba (see text). The six Finch's [sic] Parrots presumably refer to Aratinga finschi, but these specimens are entirely unaccounted for among the series in the first shipment and the species does not occur on Coiba. Six specimens of Aratinga finschi were later included among the 1902 series from the smaller islands (table 4).

Table 3

Names of the Islands of the Veragua Archipelago from which J. H. Batty Sold Specimens Dated 1902 and Their Modern Equivalents Names in boldface are of islands from which specimens of birds have been obtained by other collectors (see Olson, 1997). Although Batty mentioned the Islas Contreras in his letter to Rothschild of 14 Aug 1901, he did not label any specimens with this locality.

Table 4

Numbers of Specimens of Birds Putatively Collected in 1902 on Islands of Western Panama by J. H. Batty Data are taken mainly from catalogs and some identifications may have been changed. Islands are presented in more or less west-to-east and north-to-south sequence. Island names are as they appear on Batty labels. The few specimens labeled as coming from Burica I. and Secas Is. are omitted here but mentioned in the text. Only those species in boldface have been documented to occur on any of the smaller islands of western Panama (Olson, 1997). An asterisk (^*) indicates a species that occurs on Isla de Coiba. N  =  nest (hummingbirds only). Caution: These data are believed to be entirely fraudulent and should never be regarded as representing the actual distribution of organisms in this archipelago.

In a letter to Rothschild of 14 August 1901 from the town of David, in the lowlands of Chiriquí (see appendix), Batty mentions a pet deer obtained on Coiba that he had taken “in hotels, coaches, steamers &c … when traveling for several months”, which indicates that he had been travelling for “several months” after he left Coiba, and in fairly civilized surroundings, but prior to 29 June. This is not consistent with specimens from Coiba with June dates.

In the same letter (14 August 1901), Batty told Rothschild that “since writing you [presumably there was a letter accompanying the invoice of 29 June 1901], [I] have been on the following islands, viz Cebago, Gobernador, Contrera Secas, Parida Canalis & other islands” where there were “very few birds and but a few speci[es] different from those of Coiba”. I interpret the islands or island groups intended to be Cébaco, Gobernadora, Islas Contreras, Secas, Parida, and Canal de Afuera. He repeats this information in his letter from Boquete of 6 September 1901 (see appendix): “On visiting other islands ne[ar] the coast, I found about the same spe[cies] as on Coiba which I though[t] you would not be interested in. Anything I did no[t] find on Coiba however I collected. I have ‘done’ the ‘coast’ islands most tho[r]oughly and will now work seaward as so[on] as the dry season commences. I shall [text missing] Coiba & Jicaron as I go to sea, to ge[t] any migrants not already taken”. Yet right after saying that he has already thoroughly “done” the islands he mentions figuring with builders for a special boat for collecting on “the other islands”.

Thus, Batty twice stated that he had been to the small islands in 1901 and surveyed them thoroughly and the birds were little different from those of Coiba. Yet there are absolutely no Batty specimens from any of those islands with labels dated 1901 except for five specimens of mammals at AMNH from Isla Parida taken in November. As seen in the correspondence from W. W. Brown (MCZ archives, letter of 10 May 1901), getting to these islands would have been difficult and expensive, yet Batty did not send back any specimens from this supposed visit in 1901. Ultimately he sent Rothschild hundreds of specimens of birds dated 1902 containing a multitude of species that have never been obtained on Coiba or any of the other islands of the Veragua Archipelago, which is certainly not consistent with his statements that the birds were like those of Coiba.

Because Batty's letter places him in David on 14 August, when he said he would be off to the mountains in two days, the dates on some seven specimens from the upland locality Boquete labeled 2 August and one labeled 14 August are probably erroneous. Otherwise Batty's specimens from Boquete are dated from 19 August through 24 September 1901.

To judge from specimen labels, Batty moved very expeditiously from Boquete on 25 September and resumed collecting in the lowlands at Boquerón on 27 September. It would appear that Batty collected in the vicinity of Boquerón up until 17 December. After that date there is only a single bird labeled 26 December and three mammals labeled 29 December, all dates that may be considered doubtful. The dates of three additional mammals (Mustela and two Macrogeomys) cataloged as coming from Boquete on 24 and 25 December 1901 are likewise questionable. A single skin of a puma Felis concolor (AMNH 18948) was cataloged with the data “Boquerón 6 January 1902”, and the catalog was annotated “Mr. Batty says he will send skull”. This he apparently never did, and the skin has since been lost (R. Voss, AMNH, in litt., 10 Aug, 2000). In all likelihood this was a skin that Batty may have received incidentally from someone else, for which reason it had no skull, and the date is doubtful. Thus, the evidence from specimens suggests that Batty ceased collecting at Boquerón after 17 December, if not before, and may have been back in Panama City or Colón for the holiday. Apart from the series of specimens from the small islands of Panama supposedly collected in 1902, I could not uncover any archival material to document Batty's whereabouts between the time he collected specimens at Boquerón on 17 December 1901 and when he wrote to Rothschild from New York on 2 May 1902. Thus, there is no known independent evidence to establish that Batty, or anyone collecting for Batty, was in western Panama in 1902.

We learn much about Batty's methods in western Panama from a letter in the archives of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ), written by the collector Wilmot W. Brown to Outram Bangs at MCZ after Brown had left Panama and proceeded to Honduras:

Batty was certainly not “put up” to collecting at Boquete and Boqueron by Rothschild, who had no interest in specimens from the mainland, so this must have been at Batty's own initiative.

History of Suspicions Regarding Batty's Panama Collections

Rothchild's curator of birds, Ernst Hartert, must have had at least some suspicions regarding the origins of some of Batty specimens as we see from correspondence (appendix) in which Hartert must have cast some doubt upon the series of Three-wattled Bellbirds (Procnias tricarunculata) from Isla Cébaco. In looking at this series today, one sees that the specimens were clearly made by two different preparators—a few are of typical Batty make, but the rest are cruder, with the bills pointing upward. In itself this would not necessarily be a cause for suspicion, as Batty did have assistants. However, the more crudely prepared specimens are in the style of the collector Enrique Arcé and his relatives, who resided in the mountains of Chiriquí, and whose method of preparation was doubtless familiar to Hartert. Thus, Hartert may have suspected that Batty had obtained specimens that Arcé had collected in the highlands (which he did, as seen below) and was passing them off as being from the islands. Perhaps Hartert may also have thought that such a large, striking, montane species as the bellbird was unlikely to occur in the lowlands. The irony of this is that of all the montane species in Batty's 1902 series from the islands, the bellbird is the only one that actually has an altitudinal migration and that moves into coastal areas and islands during the nonbreeding season. Wetmore (1972: 306) found them to be common on Isla Cébaco.

If Hartert or Rothschild had further suspicions about Batty's 1902 specimens, the problem may have meant little to them because the series contained no new taxa. Rothschild's great wealth and avidity for specimens, especially of new taxa, tempted more than one dealer to manufacture false locality data, as his niece and biographer relates (M. Rothschild, 1983: 106).

Batty's 1902 island specimens would occasionally be mentioned without comment among comparative material examined in revisionary studies (e.g., Hartert and Goodson, 1917; and Zimmer's “Studies of Peruvian Birds”, published in 66 parts in American Museum Novitates during the years 1931–1955), but received no attention as a collection until Eugene Eisenmann, a research associate at AMNH with a particular interest in Panama, discovered the Batty collection. Among the Coiba material he discerned that the specimens of Turdus assimilis, which is usually an upland species, were a distinct subspecies, a fact that had perhaps been overlooked because Batty, who seems to have had an aversion to dull-plumaged birds, had preserved only two specimens of it. In this case Eisenmann was fortunate, because T. assimilis coibensis, as he named it (Eisenmann, 1950), actually is one of the interesting endemics of Coiba, as was shown later by Wetmore (1957). Eisenmann also became enthused by all the montane species in the Batty series, and thought that the specimens' locality data indicated the species' substantial altitudinal migration. He prepared a manuscript on this migratory phenomenon, including a description of the new subspecies of Turdus, that was submitted to The Auk, whose editor, Harvey Fisher, forwarded it to Alexander Wetmore for comment. This initiated a revealing interchange between Wetmore and Eisenmann. The original correspondence is now preserved in the Smithsonian Institution Archives (accession 07-077), with copies in the Division of Birds, USNM, and Department of Ornithology, AMNH.

At the outset, Wetmore was very dubious about montane species occurring in the islands and in his response to Fisher (10 October 1949) he urged “Dr. Eisenmann to give further consideration to his data since he would not want to go into print with his material unless he was absolutely certain of his ground”. He addressed the need to “make certain that there is not some confusion in data and that labels may not have been transposed or improperly made for some reason”. Then, in looking over the data, which involved only a very small proportion of the Batty material, he noted several instances of duplication of dates, when specimens supposedly were taken on widely separated islands on the same day. He suggested that “it might be useful to build up a complete itinerary of the dates from the entire collection to see what this might show. J. H. Batty was active before I became well acquainted here in the east so that I have no direct information concerning him. I have distinct recollection, however, of hearing of some difficulty with data on his labels in other collections”.

Wetmore wrote Eisenmann directly shortly thereafter (28 October 1949), mentioning the reservations he had expressed to Fisher and suggesting that he “look a little further into the matter since Batty's records seem to me entirely out of line for some of the species”. He expressed further disbelief that “such mountain species as Catharus, Balanosphryra [Melanerpes formicivorus] and Myioborus should occur in a region of lowland jungle. … It might be informative to take all of Batty's records and so build up an itinerary as indicated by his specimens”.

Eisenmann stated (2 November 1949) that he had initially had his own reservations, that he was certain that the montane species could not be breeding on the islands, but that “if there is a seasonal altitudinal movement, the cool and windy dry season would be just the time when one would expect to find the birds in the lowlands”. He conjectured that “there is no reason to doubt that [Batty] did visit the various islands off the Pacific coast of western Panama” and cited as evidence the facts that Rothschild was interested in islands, that Goldman (1920) had referred to some of Batty's specimens of mammals from these islands and had cited Thomas's (1902, 1903) papers describing new species of mammals based on Batty material in his bibliography, none of which, however, is in any way relevant to establishing whether the data on the specimens are reliable.

Eisenmann did indicate that he had worked out a “rough itinerary based upon label indications” and concluded that Batty was not collecting in the mountains from 1 January to 7 February 1902, when he was supposed to be on the islands. It might be noted, however, that establishing where Batty was not in 1902 does not tell us where he was.

Eisenmann explained the overlap in dates between specimens from Cébaco in the east in Veraguas and those from Almijas and Burica Islands as due to Batty's hypothetical vessel and hypothetical assistants touching at these islands on returning to Chiriquí for some mission, notwithstanding that Isla Burica, for example, would be far off to the west of any port to which anyone would resort for supplies or any other reason (figs. 1, 4).

Figure 4

Calendar of Batty's “itinerary” in the islands of the Veragua Archipelago showing number of birds and mammals (in parentheses) labeled as being from a given island on the date shown in 1902. These data are presented to show the unlikeliness of the itinerary, as it now appears that Batty probably never collected on any of these islands except Coiba.

Eisenmann assumed that “the number of mountain birds labeled from many different lowland localities on dates when Batty was undoubtedly in the lowlands could not be the result of mistakes, and I have no reason to suppose that Batty intentionally falsified”. In a follow-up letter (4 November 1949) he remarked that certain references in his manuscript showed that “Batty is not the only person who has found mountain birds in the Panama lowlands”, although this statement applies to only five of 26 species, and records of two of those are highly dubious—Eupherusa eximia (see Wetmore, 1968: 339) and Buarremon brunneinucha by the same reasoning.

Wetmore relented and wrote (18 November 1949) that “there is no question in my mind now from what you have written that the Batty specimens are authentic”, but still expressed reservations that certain species such as Catharus would move through such elevations, so that the populations on the islands must be resident. Here he first mentions a Batty specimen of Cyclarhis from Isla Jicarón that would eventually receive renewed attention because it was the same as the mainland subspecies, whereas the very distinct form C. g. coibae occurs on Coiba, between Jicarón and the mainland. Eisenmann then published the Batty records (Eisenmann, 1950), including the Cyclarhis, which was cited as another possible example of a mainland wanderer “inseparable from Chiriqui highland birds”. That Jicarón might be expected to share taxa with Coiba is confirmed by a specimen of Tropical Pewee belonging to the Coiba subspecies Contopus cinereus aithalodes. This was among a series of five birds collected on Isla Jicarón on 24 March 1959 by P. T. Beaudette and J. R. Northern that are the only genuine specimens of birds known from that island (Olson, 2007).

But Wetmore continued to doubt. He began expressing his reservations in his monograph on Coiba birds (Wetmore, 1957: 6–8), suggesting only that carelessness and mixing of specimens from different localities may have been responsible for various discrepancies involved with Batty specimens from Coiba. In the first volume of Wetmore's Birds of the Republic of Panama (1965: 223, 322) he was still rather reserved and said that records of Leucopternis princeps and Odontophorus gujanenesis from the small islands are “certainly erroneous” and “not to be trusted”. By the second volume (Wetmore, 1968) he was more accusatory saying that specimens were “wrongly labeled” (Elvira chionura, Selasphorus scintilla; Wetmore, 1968: 341, 378); “with false locality” (Trogon collaris; Wetmore, 1968: 407); “questionable” (Momotus momota; Wetmore, 1968: 450); and “with falsified locality data” (Melanerpes formicivorus; Wetmore, 1968: 552). The issue did not arise in the third volume (Wetmore, 1972), which deals with suboscine passerines, because Batty collected very few of these birds owing, I believe, to their generally dull coloration. The fourth volume was finished posthumously (Wetmore et al., 1984) and the data for at least six species collected by Batty were questioned there as well. In the bound set of The Auk in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Wetmore at some point pencilled in the following annotation on Eisenmann's 1950 article on the Batty collection: “Many of these ‘records’ were faked by Batty!”

Overall Content and Disposition of Batty Specimens from Panama

As discussed above, the first material Batty sent from Panama was the Coiba collection sent from the field to Rothschild in 1901 (table 2). He followed this with the collection from the smaller islands sent to Rothschild from New York in 1902, which contained birds, mammals, and butterflies.

But Batty retained considerable other Coiba material, as well as all his mainland collections. A large lot of birds from this series was purchased from Batty by AMNH, where 683 specimens were cataloged in July 1902. At the same time, AMNH purchased 256 Panamanian mammals from Batty that were cataloged in June–July 1902. Among a large collection of mammals from various localities received at AMNH from Batty in December 1905 and cataloged mainly in May–June 1906 (but some not until 1909), is a series of 466 specimens from Panama. It is significant that among the birds in the first series there are no specimens whatever from any island except Coiba.

Batty provided 35 skins of birds from Panama to FMNH that were cataloged as a gift on 31 May 1906. There are 176 mammals at FMNH from Batty labeled as from Boquerón, Boquete, and a few from Coiba. Another lot of 610 Panamanian birds came to AMNH after Batty's death, as a gift either from his company or his estate, and was cataloged in March 1910. Among all the preceding material are only four specimens from the small islands—two Buteo magnirostris labeled Iguaros Island 5 February 1902 (one FMNH, one AMNH), Tityra inquisitor from Isla Espartal 1 February 1902, and Thryothorus modestus from Isla Medidor 1 February 1902. These almost certainly represent a few incidental specimens that had inadvertently been left out of Batty's shipment to Rothschild.

If Batty had actually collected specimens on the smaller islands, why did he not retain any duplicates that he would have passed along to AMNH and FMNH with his other material? Yet only four of 2226 specimens of birds and mammals sold or given to those institutions were from the smaller island localities. That Rothschild was the sole intended recipient of specimens from the smaller islands may be a reflection of Rothschild's interest only in specimens from islands.

Problems with Specimens from Isla de Coiba

Batty's 1902 Collections from the Smaller Islands of the Veragua Archipelago

Batty's collections from the smaller islands of Chiriquí and Veraguas with label dates of 1902 consist of a series of about 850 birds and 49 hummingbird nests, more than 230 mammals, and an unknown number of Lepidoptera. From the data I have assembled and shown in figure 4, these hundreds of specimens were supposedly collected on 17 different islands on 33 days between 1 January and 7 February 1902, although there were five days in this interval with no specimens of birds. This averages out to 25.5 bird skins, 1.6 hummingbird nests, and 7 mammals per day of collecting, and 1.9 field days per island. And these were mostly islands that Batty had previously told Rothschild he had “done” thoroughly in 1901. In contrast with his treatment of Coiba specimens, where he may have attempted to make it appear as though his period afield was greater than it actually was, his time among the smaller islands appears to have been compressed into fewer days than possible to accomplish as much collecting as the specimen labels indicate.

The island names that Batty used and the names in use for the same islands today appear in table 3. There are no original field labels for any of the specimens of birds dated 1902. On all of those labels the name of the island and “J. H. BATTY” was stamped on the recto and the date was stamped on the verso. This would have required 17 separate stamps just for the different islands. None of Batty's specimens from elsewhere in Panama have similar labels.

Comparing the dates and sequence of islands visited with number of specimens (fig. 4) with the geography of the region (fig. 1) shows that even if one ignores the occasional odd specimen that seems out of place, the sequence and timing of islands visited is completely impossible and illogical if one assumes a single boat party. Even assuming that Batty had a well-trained assistant who could have collected independently and, even more unlikely, that he could have hired two reliable boats (or could have afforded them), one cannot reconcile the dates and localities on Batty's 1902 labels. Given eastern and western collecting parties, the itineraries still would be completely impractical (figs. 1, 4). Batty was consistent in one respect, however, in that the dates and localities given for birds coincide with those given for mammals and also for the one insect that was traced.

Some interestingly suspicious patterns emerge from analyzing the 1902 series of birds from the standpoint of Rothschild's general policy of purchasing a maximum of six specimens per species. Presumably this meant six per island, as in many cases there are more than six specimens for a given species in the series. In only six instances were there more than six specimens of a species for a single island: three hummingbirds, a jacamar, the bellbird Procnias tricarunculata, and the honeycreeper Cyanerpes cyaneus—all birds that are attractive or interesting in appearance. When one looks at the totals for any given species for all islands combined, a distinct pattern emerges. When the totals exceed six, there are eight species with a total of seven; four with a total of eight; six with a total of nine; and 22 with a total of 10, so that 10 appears to have been a cutoff point either imposed by Rothschild or self-imposed by Batty. The total of 10 was achieved apparently in a random fashion—e.g., all from one island (Phaethornis striigularis), or two (Amazona, Galbula, Aulacorhynchus, Procnias, Cyanerpes lucidus), and up to nine (Amazilia tzacatl). In only one instance was the total 11 specimens (Campephilus). Totals in excess of 10 are seen only in five hummingbirds, a trogon, the honeycreeper Chlorophanes, and the antbird Gymnocichla—again, all birds of attractive or interesting appearance. While inconclusive in itself, the totals being skewed towards 10 may be suggestive of manipulation of the data.

Mammal Specimens from the Smaller Islands

Among the Batty mammals at AMNH are three specimens of the opossum Caluromys derbianus from Isla Parida with dates of 19 and 27 November 1901, and two of the sloth Choloepus hoffmanni with the dates 22 and 25 November 1901. This was during the period when Batty was at his lowland station at Boquerón and there are specimens of birds from Boquerón that are labeled with the same dates, though only one on 27 November. There are no birds and no other mammals from Parida in any of Batty's collections with a date of 1901. Thus Batty may have gone to Isla Parida himself on at least some of these dates, or more likely a few specimens were brought to him by someone else. They constitute the only plausible evidence that Batty ever obtained a scientific specimen from any Panamanian island other than Coiba, and the dates do not agree with the dates of specimens from Parida sold to Rothschild (18–19, 23 January 1902). On the other hand, maybe even these data are suspect, as sloths are evidently not known to occur on any of the islands of the Veragua Archipelago, although Caluromys is known from the large island of Cébaco.

Batty's series of mammals from the smaller islands of the Veragua Archipelago dated 1902 and sold to Rothschild was worked up by Thomas (1903). The localities and dates coincide exactly with those of the birds from the same islands. The 1903 date given for some of the primates from this collection (Napier, 1976) is due either to a cataloging error or to confusion with the year of Thomas' (1903) publication. Mammalian taxa in the Batty series and their supposed distributions on the islands are summarized in table 5. The locality “Tologa” given by Thomas (1903: 42) for a specimen of Didelphis marsupialis is nonexistent. Nor is it an error for the island of Taboga, which lies much farther to the east, nearer the Pacific terminus of the canal. In his letter of 2 May 1902, to Rothschild (see appendix), Batty mentions a steamer “Taloga” that was supposedly taken by rebels, and this may somehow have gotten transposed into a locality.

Table 5

Numbers of Specimens of Mammals Putatively Collected in 1902 on Islands of Western Panama by J. H. Batty Data are taken mainly from Thomas (1903) with nomenclature following Handley (1966). Islands are presented in more or less west-to-east and north-to-south sequence. Caution: These data are believed to be entirely fraudulent and should never be regarded as representing the actual distribution of organisms in this archipelago.

Relatively little has been documented about the mammalian faunas of the Veragua Archipelago with the exception of Isla Cébaco and to a lesser extent Gobernadora. Edwin L. Tyson, with several assistants and accompanied most of the time by Alexander Wetmore, mist-netted and trapped mammals intensively on Cébaco in 1965 (Olson, 1997). A less intensive effort was made on Isla Gobernadora. I have summarized Tyson's findings from catalog records at USNM.

The only nonvolant mammals obtained by Tyson on Cébaco were three species of opossums (Caluromys derbianus, Philander opossum, Chironectes minimus), two rodents (Zygodontomys brevicauda, Dasyprocta punctata), and a rabbit (Sylvilagus brasiliensis). Batty's collection from Cébaco did not include Philander, Chironectes, Dasyprocta, or Sylvilagus, but did include two species of Sciurus, Reithrodontomys, Sigmodon, Proechimys, Tamandua, Choloepus, and Didelphis, which, had they actually occurred on the island, would surely have been encountered by Tyson.

The only nonvolant mammals found by Tyson on Isla Gobernadora were Philander opossum and Rattus rattus. Batty's collection from Gobernadora includes Sylvilagus (the only island on which he supposedly found it), Tamandua, Didelphis, Caluromys, and 15 specimens of Proechimys. Had Proechimys been present on Gobernadora in such abundance, it would not have been overlooked by Tyson, nor would the other taxa have been likely to escape notice. Thus, the primates, edentates, squirrels, porcupines, and three of the other genera of rodents in Batty's supposed 1902 collection are otherwise unknown on any island of the Veragua Archipelago, with the exception of Alouatta on Coiba.

There are few Chiroptera in the Batty series, mostly common and widespread species, of which there are but four from Cébaco, all of which were also obtained on the island by Tyson. Batty's single Molossus coibensis was supposedly from Gobernadora, but interestingly Tyson did not find that species there or on Cébaco, despite having obtained dozens of specimens of nearly 20 species of bats on the latter.

It is evident that Batty's collection of mammals from the smaller islands of Panama is every bit as suspect as his collection of birds and like them doubtless came from the Panamanian mainland. If so, it would mean that the type locality of the one taxon based on the Batty collection would have to be altered. The porcupine Coendou rothschildi Thomas, 1903, was described from a specimen supposedly taken on the mostly mangrove island of Sevilla on 24 January 1902. This is still recognized as a full species with a distribution throughout the lower elevations of Panama except on the western Caribbean coast (Handley, 1966). The locality for the holotype should be changed to “probably the vicinity of Boquerón, Chiriquí, Panama”. The specimen would have been collected between 27 September and 17 December 1901.

Conclusion

In summary, the following set of circumstances and facts pertain to Batty's 1902 specimens from the Veragua Archipelago:

From this, I think that there can be no other conclusion than that the entire 1902 series consists of specimens from Batty's principal mainland localities at Boquete and Boqueron that were deliberately mislabeled by Batty to meet Rothschild's desire for specimens from islands. That Batty was capable of such fraudulent activity is supported by the mislabeling of specimens in his series from Isla de Coiba documented above and the dubiousness of the data associated with Batty's specimens from Chitra, Veraguas, documented below.

An Additional Questionable Collection of Birds from the Mainland of Western Panama Sold by J. H. Batty

I encountered another small lot of birds in AMNH collection for which Batty appears to have supplied suspect data. This involves some 83 specimens labeled as being from Chitra, Veraguas. These were received directly from Batty, or his estate, with the first 59 being cataloged in 1902 (numbers ranging from AMNH 77394 to 78053) and another 24 cataloged in 1910 (numbers ranging from AMNH 106316 to 106831). Most of the information regarding these specimens I have taken from the catalogs and I have examined only a few of the specimens, which are clearly not of Batty's style of preparation.

Although some of the labels have only Batty's name, others include that of the collector Arcé. The original Arcé was Enrique Arcé, a Guatemalan who was trained by the English ornithologist Osbert Salvin and who moved to western Panama in the1860s, whence over the years he sent many specimens of birds to Salvin (Olson and Violani, 1996). A brother of his, David, was also involved in collecting birds (Salvin, 1870). A descendent of Enrique Arcé, who went by the name “Enriquito”, was presumed to have been a son (Olson and Violani, 1996), but there is no direct statement to this effect among the biographical files of Alexander Wetmore in the Division of Birds, USNM, from which information regarding the Arcé family was taken. About 1900–1901, Enriquito is known (Wetmore files) to have obtained birds for the collectors H. J. Watson, who resided in Chiriquí, and W. W. Brown, who worked for the brothers Bangs at Harvard University. Enriquito was still alive and preparing birds with Tollef Mönniche in Chiriquí in 1937 (fig. 5).

Figure 5

“Enriquito” Arcé (on left) preparing birds with Tollef Mönniche at Finca Lérida, Chiriquí, Panama, July 1937. Photograph by Oliver P. Pearson.

Enriquito Arcé would have been collecting during the period when Batty was in Panama and Batty made little or no attempt to disguise the fact that the 83 specimens in question were obtained from the Arcé family. The three dates in April (table 6) coincide with the period that Batty was on Isla de Coiba, so regardless of whose name is on the label of the specimens with those dates, they almost certainly were not collected by Batty. The problem lies with the dates and the locality, which is always given as “Chitra”. This is a known collecting locality of Enrique Arcé, who first sent specimens from there to Salvin between 1866 and 1870 (Salvin, 1870). Chitra (not to be confused with Chitré, Herrera, on the Azuero Peninsula) is in the mountains of the Pacific slope of Veraguas fairly near the continental divide and eastern boundary with Coclé. It does not appear on many maps. In a gazetteer of Panama (United States Board on Geographic Names, 1990), it is designated as an airfield, being an unverified locality at 8°29′ N, 80°49′ W. The collectors Rev. H. T. Heyde and Ernesto Lux also sold specimens labeled “Chitra” to the Smithsonian Institution, collected in June/July 1889 (USNM catalog records).

Table 6

List of the species of birds labeled by J. H. Batty as coming from Chitra, Veraguas, Panama, listed by date of collection in 1901. Data from AMNH catalogs. Number of specimens when greater than one are indicated in parentheses. Some of these specimens may well have come from Chitra, others almost certainly did not. The dates are in all likelihood entirely manufactured.

Salvin's (1870) original list of specimens from Chitra included at least 101 species, so Enrique Arcé must have spent considerable time there. It is clear from this list that more than one biotic zone was visited, as there are both lowland-foothill species and many highland species (e.g., the wrens Henicorhina leucosticta and H. leucophrys).

When we examine the list of species from Batty's series labeled “Chitra” by date, the improbability of the dates and locality for all or any of them becomes apparent (table 6). No collector in 1901 could have achieved a daily take in Panama such as that of Batty's on 5 March (or even that for 6 March). The lists for these two days contain some of the rarissima rariorum of Panamanian ornithology. It is highly doubtful that even with a tape recorder, automobile, and helicopter, anyone could see or hear the first eight species listed under 5 March 1901 in a single day in the Republic of Panama, to say nothing of collecting and preparing specimens of them, along with other species.

Without knowing precisely what may have been included under the locality “Chitra” by any Arcé, it is still unlikely that certain lowland forms among the Batty series could have come from there. The best examples are the rail Amaurolimnas concolor, which is usually encountered in swampy coastal situations, most often on islands. The grackle Quiscalus mexicanus would have been an uncommon bird in western Panama in 1901 and then confined to coastal habitats.

At least one species has never been collected in Veraguas. The four specimens of the Banded Parakeet Bolborhynchus lineola in the Batty series “bear a cardboard slip with Batty's name, the dates March 5 and 6, 1901, and the notation ‘Chitra, Colombia, D. Arce[.]’ These apparently are part of a lot of specimens obtained from Arcé on which Batty placed his own labels. I do not accept the locality as valid” (Wetmore, 1968: 83–84).

My interpretation of Batty's series of specimens labeled “Chitra” is that he must have met up with an Arcé, probably Enriquito, about the time the latter was involved with collecting specimens for Watson. Batty may have picked out the choicest of whatever Arcé may have had on hand and purchased those specimens, along with a few others. I do not recall ever seeing an Arcé specimen with a precise date on the label, and the younger Arcé may not have put any label with localitiy on the specimens. Batty may simply have picked a well-worked Arcé locality and a few arbitrary dates and labeled the specimens he obtained from Arcé accordingly. I would regard the data for the 83 specimens from Batty labeled “Chitra” in AMNH as having the data only “western Panama, most likely Pacific slope, prior to 1901, collector Arcé”.