The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet

Rating:
Summary: Slimy Things That Crawl with Legs...
Review: This is the first complete English translation of an important work by the Dutch botanist, zoologist, and ethnographer Rumphius; it was first published in 1705. On his arrival on the island of Ambon in the Dutch East Indies, Rumphius began studying, as a hobby, the region's flora and fauna; soon, he was toying with the idea of writing a book on the subject.

However, he went blind at 42, and thus was forced to write his books during three decades of "sad darkness." Notwithstanding this misfortune, his charming descriptions are marvellously detailed; as though in compensation for his blindness, he had a prodigious visual memory and a gift for striking descriptions. (In fact, a 1990 scientific survey of Ambon praised Rumphius for his "great accuracy and reliability.") The black-and-white plates are beautiful, and would be worth having even if one had no intention of reading a word of the text.

Apart from its scientific virtues, "The Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet" contains many evocative and mildly alarming passages, as thus: "The Dog Crab...extends its hollow passages under Houses, and crawls out of them at night, making a lot of noise. It also knows how to creep up on Chickens, grab one by the feet, and haul it to its hole, which causes the nocturnal noise that one hears sometimes coming from the Chicken coops. If you pour hot water in their holes, they have to come out."

This is a valuable work of ethnography as well, since Rumphius respectfully catalogs the natives' folklore and social behavior. And he is not above throwing in the odd bit of gossip, political commentary, or personal anecdote. (For hardier souls than myself, it might even serve as a cookbook, since Rumphius describes his attempts to eat virtually every creature he comes across.)

Rumphius epitomizes the best qualities of the woefully devalued seventeenth-century approach to science: as the editor and translator of this volume says, his writing "is ready to impart information yet is more interested in understanding, while as religion, it aspires to a state of rapture but does not want to impose orthodoxy or ideology." More by far than one could say of Richard Dawkins!

Anyone who enjoys this book may also wish to track down a used copy of "The Poison Tree," which comprises excerpts from the same author's massive "Ambonese Herbal."