Archivkopie der Website http://www.humboldt-im-netz.de
Gespiegelte Fassung auf dem Publikationsserver der Universität Potsdam
Stand: 12. August 2005
Achtung: Diese Version der Website ist nicht aktuell. Um die aktuelle Fassung der Seiten zu betrachten, folgen Sie bitte dem Hyperlink http://www.hin-online.de/

HiN - Humboldt im Netz

______________________________________________________

  

Engelhard Weigl

Acclimatization: The Schomburgk brothers in South Australia

Chapter 4

The year 1865 was probably the hardest year that Richard Schomburgk experienced in Buchsfelde when „all the work in fields and garden“ rested on his shoulders alone, but it also finally freed him from the insecure existence of a farmer and gave him more time for his scientific research. After the death of George William Francis, the first Director of the Botanic Garden, Schomburgk, now in his 54th year, was offered the position of director.

Francis and Schomburgk agreed in their critique of the exclusive concentration on the three Ws: wheat, wine, and wool as the economic basis of the colony. (Schomburgk, however, would not have include viniculture.)[1]  But the reasons given by them vary considerably. While Schomburgk’s recommendations are based on the experience of the exhausted state of the soil, the susceptibility to diseases and the special climatic conditions of the Australian continent, Francis seems to be motivated more by the extravagant needs of the English upper classes who want more than mutton and damper for dinner every day. They would also like to recreate the familiar backdrop of the mother country: „How delightful, of a summer’s evening, to hear the English blackbird, and in the morning the English skylark? I should like to see again my old impudent friend the sparrow, and the robin, and the wren; even the cuckoo would remind us of merry England; and a run for a few miles over our broken mountains after a wily old fox would be no bad sport (to those who like it.).“[2] Francis hardly mentions economic and environmental arguments.

Schomburgk’s work however as Director of the Botanic Garden, was most certainly marked by his experience of the devastating drought and the intensive work in his garden and on his fields. 15 years of agricultural experience and on top of that - on Sundays - meticulous observations of the native flora and fauna were an arduous but also very useful learning process. The naive optimism of the first years has given way to a more careful analysis. His recommendations to farmers and politicians are clear enough. He criticizes the imbalance caused by monoculture as well as the rapidly progressing deforestation due to the expansion of the colony. He says in a meeting of the Chamber of Manufactures: „It must be evident to all that the period has arrived for a change in our system of husbandry. The efforts of our agriculturists have now to a considerable extent to be directed to other objects than that of wheat-growing, which has reached its utmost limits - [...] The fertility of large tracts of our soil has been already exhausted for want of attention to the warnings of science. Warnings such as these, constantly repeated, have been less heeded than they ought to have been. ... The vital question with us is, what shall we do - which are the plants practical and useful to add to the ordinary occupation of our agriculturists? I am sorry to say they are not so very numerous. The peculiarity of our climate, especially the continuous droughts, are not favorable to many useful commercial plants - they are decidedly adverse to tropical and subtropical agriculture. ... We may know all about the structure of such a plant, its life, its distribution, its culture, its use - we do not know it completely because for our particular purpose we must know also its natural enemies.“[3] The multitude of initiatives he proposed, spanning from the recommendation to establish Forest Reserves[4]  to the discussion about the negative effects of introduced plant species, I cannot elaborate on. The reconciliation of climate and flora with successful and profitable agriculture which does not ruin the environment were the practical objectives of Richard’s work in his remaining years in South Australia. He never lost sight, though, of the importance of economic factors, but for him expansion did not necessarily mean progress. As the Atlas of South Australia states plainly: „For the first 125 years of European settlement the clearance of native vegetation was usually equated with `progress’.[5] But this was most certainly not Schomburgk’s position: „It is an historical fact that whenever man settles in a new country he not only carries the weeds that are most troublesome in cultivated ground along with him, but he also exercises a potent influence over the indigenous vegetation, especially when he engages in agricultural and pastoral pursuits. The plough, the axe, the flocks and herds, are enemies to the existing vegetation, and as cultivation advances each representant of the herbaceous flora, perennial and annual, succumbs to the foreign influence. But the plough, the axe and herds are not the sole destroyer of the native herbage, for with cultivation are introduced noxious weeds, and the new-comers, finding a suitable soil and climate, spread with alarming rapidity, and become possessors of the ground, ejecting the indigenous herbaceous plants, and taking their places.“[6]

Richard Schomburgk was not a theoretical mind, purely academic work was relegated to the after hours out of sheer necessity and consisted mainly in the collection and description of the native flora and fauna. Until now this part of his life’s work has remained large unacknowledged, because it is all still hidden in letters and collection in museums and archives.



[1] Atlas of South Australia, op. cit. (n. 46), p. 42: „In 1865 South Australia had one-half of the land under wheat in Australia, a position it still maintained in 1890. ... Throughout the nineteenth century, wheat growing on family farms was seen by politicians and public alike as the firm and certain basis for future prosperity.“ 

[2] Francis, op. cit. (n. 14), p. 10.

[3] Richard Schomburgk: Capabilities of the various districts in the colony. Read before the Chamber of Manufactures. In: Richard  Schomburgk: Papers read before the Philosophical Society and the

Camber of Manufactures.  Adelaide: 1873, p. 102.

[4] See Richard M. Schomburgk: Influence of Forests on Climate.  In: Richard  Schomburgk: Papers read before the Philosophical Society and the Camber of Manufactures.  Adelaide: 1873.

[5] Atlas of South Australia, op. cit. (n. 46), p. 57.

[6] Richard Schomburgk: On the naturalised weeds and other plants in South Australia. Adelaide 1879,  p. 3.

 

______________________________________________________

<< letzte Seite  |  Übersicht