Birds and Indian agriculture - turf wars

Alongside the activism against the plume trade in Victorian England, there was a widespread interest in understanding the "value" of birds to Indian agriculture possibly since many birds were trapped for the trade coinciding with famines in India. It was also a period when the British Empire intensified agricultural research efforts. Recall that professional agricultural entomology in India was influenced by Eleanor Ormerod who suggested that if she could do as much as she did voluntarily for English agriculture, a lot could be done with a paid position in India! Ormerod, oddly enough, was engaged in a campaign to eradicate the sparrow in England when other upper class ladies were clamouring for the protection of birds. While Reverend F.O. Morris and some other male conservationists wrote letters noting  her deviation from expected feminine conduct and requested her to show "compassion ... and fulfil her duty as a woman", there were farmers who agreed with her and argued on Christian foundations that although sparrows "...  were created for some wise purpose. Such was undoubtedly the case in the original order. But the Great Creator made man to rule over the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field, leaving it to his judgment to destroy such that were found more destructive than beneficial." [Bradshaw, 2014; Holmes, 2016] As early as 1892, the idea that some careful examination was needed was mooted and the phrase "economic ornithology" was introduced by Earl Cathcart. 

It is unclear how the bird-agriculture question spilled over into India but an early attempt to look at Indian birds from an agricultural perspective was by Charles William Mason, an entomologist. In 1907, Mason offered tubes and instructions for collectors of birds to provide him with the contents of the gut and gizzards of birds that had been shot. The idea at the time was that based on the diet, birds could be classified into three neat classes as being beneficial, injurious, or neutral to agriculture. Very little is known of the life of Mason, he joined the research institute at Pusa as a supernumerary entomologist working under Harold Maxwell Lefroy and left India in 1910 to study at Wye, and the US before moving to work in Nyasaland where he died of black-water fever (malaria) on 28 November 1917 at Namiwawa. Mason's intensive work on the examination of the contents of the guts of 1325 birds shot mainly around Pusa in Bihar may perhaps be among the few of its kind. Mason did not publish much before leaving India. Lefroy himself left India in 1911 but the interest in birds continued with his successor T.B. Fletcher who encouraged the a planter and naturalist Charles Inglis to conduct studies in relation to agriculture. The two wrote a series of illustrated articles on birds in the Agricultural Journal of India but it appears that the professional entomologists (note that Fletcher himself would easily qualify as an amateur by modern standards) were unimpressed. A reprint of the series was made as Birds of an Indian Garden (1924). 

Inglis later spent his energies editing the Journal of the Darjeeling Natural History Society and managing the society's museum in Darjeeling. His journal includes interesting discussions between Inglis and S C Law. Law was an avid aviculturist who obtained birds from the wild. Inglis met Law and his trappers in Darjeeling with a number of sunbirds and in a subsequent note Law documented their sad fate resulting from their aggressive behaviour. At the 1923 meeting organized by Fletcher he notes "the amateur entomologists, whom we are always glad to see and to help as far as possible, are also represented by Major Kingston and Mr. Inglis." 

Present at the same meeting was a professionally employed south Indian entomologist from Coimbatore, P. Susainathan. Susainathan had written an interesting note on the birds of the Coimbatore region from a standpoint of economic ornithology called "Bird Friends and Foes" (1921). Susainathan later worked in Iraq and at some point decided he was better off catching insects for taxonomic specialists and began perhaps a career unique in India, at least for an Indian (there were professional collectors like William Doherty who made much larger collections, pers. comm. Michael Geiser, NHM London). He advertised in various entomological magazines and offered to send specimens from India within the group that they were interested in. The Wikipedia biography covers the key bits on him and his family members who continued in the collection enterprise. There are nearly forty insect species with names like nathani or susainathani, nathanae, and nathanorum (of Mr Nathan, of Mrs Nathan, of the Nathans). Susainathan's book has a description of the sparrow which includes the term "aerial rat" which recalls Ormerod's usage of "avian rat".

The Nathan family in the 1970s - photo from Karl Werner (1956-2007)
P. Susainathan is second from right in the back row.
Scan courtesy of Juergen Wiesner

It is worth recording that professional entomologists appear to have guarded the field of economic entomology as far as its applications to agriculture went. When Salim Ali made an application to the ICAR to study birds (see linked document in the National Archives of India),  Baini Prashad of the ZSI was largely supportive, but the proposal was essentially nixed by the Imperial Entomologist at that point of time (viz. Hem Singh Pruthi, although the letter seems to have been forwarded to the government by F.J.F. Shaw). Pruthi's comments are worth noting for the tone of protection of the professional turf (apart from some casual sexism):

The most suitable man for undertaking the study of Insectivorous birds is one who is primarily a good entomologist and possesses some knowledge of birds in addition. He should be familiar with the habits of the Insect fauna of the area and be able to identify himself the stomach contents of the birds immediately after their death. The chief man should have a taxidermist to assist him in the preservation of the birds, which can be got named by specialists afterwards.

There has been a great deal of writing on the professionalization of science and most of what is written in traditional (or should it be professional?) history of science departments would appear to show professionalization as a positive and progressive step and few studies if ever look at the negatives  such as how profession-defenders define the boundaries of subjects, block so-called outsiders, and thereby prevent possible enrichment and growth.

Further reading

• Bradshaw, D. (2014). "Wretched Sparrows": Protectionists, Suffragettes and the Irish. Woolf Studies Annual, 20, 41-52.  
• Holmes, Matthew (2016). The Sparrow Question: Social and Scientific Accord in Britain,1850–1900. Journal of the History of Biology 50(3):645-671.
• Mason, C.W. (1907). The Food of the Mynah. The Agricultural Journal of India 2(3):280-282.
• Mason, C.W. and Maxwell-Lefroy, H. (1911). Memoirs of the Department of Agriculture in India. The Food of Birds in India. Calcutta: The Imperial Department of Agriculture in India.
  
• Susainathan, P. (1921). Bird
  Friends And Foes Of The Farmer. Department of Agriculture, Madras. Bulletin no. 81. 
  

Postscript April 2023: Mr S. R. Nayak who worked in the BNHS showed me a very interesting collection of visiting cards that Salim Ali owned and in it was a rather interesting card. One can almost imagine Ali commenting on the title (occupation) used here. Yash Pal Beri was trained as an agricultural entomologist and appears to have been the founding member of the IARI agricultural ornithology group which was later joined by R. K. Bhatnagar and others. Bhatnagar retired around 1997 and he gave me his collection of issues of the Newsletter of Birdwatchers which are now digitized on the Internet Archive.

Beri's card from Salim Ali's card collection
(now in the NCBS archives)

PS: November 2024 - P. Susainathan's grandson sent me a biography of Susainathan and others in the family that collected insects. With his permission I put it up on the Internet Archive where you can find it.