A go to to stick with a distant aunt in London all the time included time in Foyle’s bookshop on Charing Cross Highway, which held as far as I ever discovered the very best number of books on pure historical past on the time. There, in 1961, I discovered a brand new guide by A.H. Sales space Small Mammals of West Africa. It was in a collection West African Nature Handbooks and had been revealed in 1960. It was at a worth I may afford (not very a lot as a schoolboy with little or no in his pocket) and I duly went via the weird means of paying. First, queue on the gross sales assistant’s counter. Hand over the guide and be given a discount to take the one cashier’s counter on every ground. Queue once more, pay, wait whereas the money went via pneumatic tubes to a central workplace and the chit got here backed stamped. Take the chit to the primary counter. Queue acquire and gather the guide. Discover the rackety elevate surrounded by slim grubby stairs and ultimately discover your approach out of the store. Amazon it was not.
On the again cowl was printed the next paragraph:
Angus Sales space, the creator of this guide, was on the employees of the Division of Zoology on the College School of Ghana. He died instantly and tragically shortly after finishing the manuscript of this pleasant guide. His premature demise on the early age of thirty robbed the world of an excellent younger man, already recognised as one of many main authorities on the mammals of West Africa.
and after his personal Introductory chapter:
The reader will be taught with sorrow of the sudden and tragic demise of Angus Sales space shortly after finishing the manuscript of this pleasant guide. He was initially appointed common editor of the collection and deliberate himself to jot down a companion guide on the bigger mammals. His premature demise on the early age of 30 not solely stopped this work abruptly however robbed the world of an excellent younger man, already recognised as one of many main authorities on the mammals of West Africa.
And that’s all I knew of Angus Sales space till I began my seek for the id of Miss Waldron. I discovered that Angus Sales space had supplied 26 specimens of the eponymous purple colobus to the Pure Historical past Museum, 7 in 1956 (6 from Ghana; 1 from Côte d’Ivoire) whereas 19 have the admission date of 1971 suggesting they had been handed to the museum some years after his demise.
I then discovered that Angus Sales space was certainly a pioneer of primatology in West Africa, his work remembered in such feedback as:
Earlier than his tragic demise at age 30, Angus Sales space supplied a few of the earliest observations on West African monkeys in a collection of influential papers.
As early because the Fifties the biologist Angus Sales space warned that until adequate protecting measures had been taken, this monkey would turn out to be extinct within the close to future.
Angus Sales space of College School, Ghana, did refined research of synecology of west African primate communities within the early Fifties. Sales space absolutely would have had a significant affect on primate subject analysis if he had not died tragically in 1959 [sic – 1958] on the age of 30.
In his later, traditional paper on the zoogeography of West African primates, Sales space (1958)…
Angus Herdman Sales space was born on 1 September 1927 in Ashton below Lyne Registration District, Lancashire. In 1950 he married Cynthia Pamela Mary Knight in Cambridge. Each had been Cambridge zoology graduates. A daughter was born in 1954 and a son in 1957. When travelling between UK and Ghana he gave an tackle in Southport, Lancashire, probably that of his dad and mom. I can no hint of him within the 1939 Register, the emergency census. Might the household have been overseas at the moment or was he merely missed out?
Angus Sales space, a Lecturer at College School Achimota died on 16 March 1958 on the Ridge Hospital Accra after what a word on a convention, of which he was the unique secretary, in Nature, described as a brief sickness and having spent six years in Ghana (i.e. appointed in 1951 or early 1952).
Whereas in Ghana Sales space appeared in a number of newspaper accounts describing his work on monkeys but in addition on this one by Craven Hill, the Night Commonplace’s Zoo Correspondent, which was syndicated all through the nation and brought up by the Londonderry Gazette of two September 1952.
Angus Sales space didn’t confine himself to analysis on the primates. Papers appeared on geckos and on mammals usually. I’ve appended a in all probability incomplete listing of Sales space’s publications.
The story of the Cubicles doesn’t finish with the demise of Angus in Ghana. That is from the Kenya Institute of Primate Analysis web site:
The thought to begin a primate analysis centre in Kenya was mooted in 1958 when Dr. LSB Leakey was visiting Ghana. He discovered that his good friend…Angus Sales space, had died very instantly after about 9 [six] years of primate analysis work in Ghana, which he had carried out collectively together with his spouse, Cynthia Sales space. Each of them had been identified to LSB Dr. LSB Leakey for a very long time, and each had been very extremely certified Cambridge College graduates in Biology and Animal Habits. Dr. LSB Leakey enquired of Cynthia what she deliberate to do now that her husband had died, and she or he mentioned that she would end off the publication of their newest joint report, and wind present analysis, after which she would want to go away Ghana. After pondering the matter for twenty-four hours, LSB steered the subsequent day that she ought to come and proceed analysis on monkeys with a base someplace close to Nairobi. Accordingly, on the finish of 1958 she arrived in Kenya, and the Tigoni Primate Analysis Centre got here into existence.
Writing in 1983 James G Else wrote of the institution:
The historical past of the IPR is a thorny one, beset with monetary difficulties and different crises. The institute started, via the urging of Louis Leakey, as a non-public enterprise of Cynthia Sales space, a zoology graduate of Cambridge, who had studied primates in Ghana for ·a number of years. The primary out of doors enclosures had been constructed on her 10-acre farm at Tigoni in 1960. Many of those cages and even a few of the buildings had been constructed by Cynthia Sales space and Louis Leakey on weekends, to economize.
Within the early days, many of the work at what was then known as the Tigoni Primate Analysis Centre concerned accumulating and sustaining quite a lot of primate species; analysis was restricted primarily to taxonomic research. Kenyan independence resulted in a necessity for land for the resettlement of hundreds of homeless folks. Giant areas of forest had been minimize down, ensuing within the lack of habitats for lots of the nation’s indigenous monkeys. Thus the foremost process of the fledgling institute was the gathering of monkeys, significantly uncommon species. This was carried out as quickly because the finances and development of services allowed.
Ultimately the necessity for growth made it clear that the Institute may now not stay a non-public enterprise. In 1968, funds from the Munitalp Basis had been used to buy a 20-acre plot half a mile from the unique location. All of the out of doors enclosures and 120 monkeys representing 12 species had been moved to this new web site and Cynthia Sales space turned the salaried director. Throughout these early life, Dr. Leakey managed to acquire monetary help from quite a lot of sources, together with the Nationwide Institute of Well being, however there was by no means sufficient cash to offer for greater than primary care and feeding of the monkeys, a small employees and really modest analysis. In 1968 NIH discontinued its help of the IPR and Cynthia Sales space resigned.
The one different info I’ve been capable of finding is that Cynthia remarried and died in Australia, in 2010 aged 80.
The Guide: Small Mammals of West Africa
The illustrator was Clifford Lees. The one info I’ve on Lees is that he was an everyday and frequent contributor to the Halifax Courier on pure historical past, illustrated by his personal drawings. He was a member of the Halifax Scientific Society. I believed the illustrations to be glorious.
As I learn the textual content I realised that Sales space had saved plenty of the animals he described, together with monkeys. He thanked his spouse, ‘who places up with mammals round the home, and treats them as a part of the household’.
He doesn’t point out Miss Waldron’s Purple Colobus by title as a result of in coping with the entire of West Africa, he handled it as one of many 4 subspecies of P. badius. I think he nonetheless would. He wrote:
They reside in massive troops, typically of as much as fifty monkeys. Their capacity to leap is kind of unrivalled, and most spectacular jumps are constituted of one tall tree to the subsequent. A troop of Purple Colobus isn’t silent. Their high-pitched ‘kyow’, a really bird-like sound, betrays even a resting troop. Furthermore, their behaviour when hunted by Man is much from crafty. Therefore these innocent and exquisite creatures are in peril of changing into extinct…The younger are thought-about not possible to rear in captivity.
On this plate from the guide, it’s doable to see from the coloration of the hind limbs that Lees truly exhibits Miss Waldron’s Purple Colobus of Ghana, as may be anticipated.
Angus Herdman Sales space’s Scientific Publications
Sales space AH.1954. A word on the colobus monkeys of the Gold and Ivory Coasts. Annals and Journal of Pure Historical past 12, 857-60.
Sales space AH. 1955. Speciation within the Mona monkeys. Journal of Mammalogy 36, 434-49.
Sales space AH. 1956. The Cercopithecidae of the Gold and Ivory Coasts: geographic and systematic observations. Annals and Journal of Pure Historical past, ninth Ser. 9, 476-80.
Sales space AH. 1956. The distribution of primates within the Gold Coast. Journal of the West African Science Affiliation 2, 122-33.
Sales space AH. 1956. An annotated listing of the Gold Coast geckos with key. Journal of the West African Science Affiliation 2, 134–136.
Sales space AH. 1957. Observations on the pure historical past of the Olive Colobus Monkey, Procolobus vera (van Beneden). Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1957, 421-430.
Osman Hill WC, Sales space AH. 1958. Voice and larynx in African and Asiatic Colobidae. Journal of the Bombay Pure Historical past Society 54, 309-321.
Sales space AH. 1958. The Niger, the Volta and the Dahomey Gaps as geographic limitations. Evolution 12, 48-62.
Sales space AH. 1958. The zoogeography of West African primates: a assessment. Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Afrique Noire 20, 587-622.
Sales space AH. 1959. On the mammalian fauna of the Accra Plain. Journal of the West African Science Affiliation 5 26-36.
Sales space AH. 1960). Small Mammals of West Africa. London: Longmans.
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Lastly, two extra of Lees’s plates from the guide:
Else JG. 1983 A nationwide primate centre for Kenya. Kenya Previous and Current 15, 35-39.