Science reflects eras in history through the names it gives to new discoveries.
Ichthyologist Paul Skelton was explaining how the Sandelia Bainsii fish (popularly known as the Rocky) is named after the great war warrior, Xhosa King Sandile Mgolombane and geologist Andrew Geddes Bain.
Members of Port Alfred’s University of the 3rd Age (U3A) and guests recently enjoyed Skelton’s informative talk, ‘Fish Tales on the Kowie’. This while they celebrated the club’s 15th birthday with cake and tea.
The talk highlighted the scientific exploration and naming of freshwater fishes. Skelton worked as a taxonomist for many years, describing new species and correcting the names when there were errors made.
“The British occupation of the Cape in 1806 heralded a new era of scientific exploration in southern Africa,” Skelton said.
One of the first and better known explorers who visited the Kowie during his expedition of 1811-1812 was William John Burchell. He not only collected plants but many other organisms and made sketches of fishes that became the source of the first described freshwater fishes from southern Africa.
Interestingly, Skelton mentioned how the Keiskamma River was used as the meeting point for trading between the British administration and the AmaXhosa tribe. The ichthyologist also pointed out that the Burchell original map can be found at the Clivia Wonders Nursery located just out of town on the river.
The story of the ‘Rocky’, an anabantid fish described in 1861 as Sandelia bainsii from the Kowie by a French Consul to the Cape in the 1850s – Count F de Castelnau – anchored Skelton’s presentation.
Skelton said he encountered the classic frontier fish for the first time in his professional career when he was deployed to investigate the big fish kill when the Nico Malan pass bridge was being built in 1972.
The specimens of the Rocky collected by Castelnau are in the Natural History Museum in Paris, where the name-bearing (type) specimens of other species from southern Africa, including the earliest known specimens of freshwater fishes of a sister-species to the Rocky (the Cape kurper, Sandelia capensis) are also found.
Sir Andrew Smith, the ‘Father of South African Zoology’ a Scottish army medical doctor who founded the South African Museum and became the Surgeon General of the British Army Medical Department during the Crimean War, also described the ‘Rocky’ and its sister species. That description was lost in the turmoil of the times.
Skelton told the audience about George Ford who lived in a farm near Bathurst, who in 1831 was the first artist to have his fish illustrations published in South Africa. He said Ford was discovered as a young boy aged 12, by the father of South African zoology, Andrew Smith, and through his guidance he became one the greatest illustrators in the country. Smith conducted several extensive expeditions in southern Africa and took along with him artists including Ford and Charles Bell. Ford became one of the best known artists at the Natural History Museum in London. Ford’s sketches of animals encountered during the Great Expedition of 1834-36 are in the William Cullen Library, on the east campus of the University of Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg.
Very few of Smith’s type specimens exist in The Natural History Museum in London and one of these is that of the ‘Rocky’. However it is registered under a different name, as described by the then resident ichthyologist, Dr Albert Günther, in ignorance of the history of the specimen. The specimen had been donated without due context by ‘Officers of the Medical Museum at Fort Pitt’, outside of London, when the latter museum was closed by Florence Nightingale in 1858.
Skelton explained how the ‘Rocky’ and its sister species reached southern Africa and the Kowie River – a fascinating 50-million-year saga involving colliding continents, river captures and climate changes “of far greater measure than the present crisis entails”.
