John Thomas Tunney (1870–1929) was a naturalist and collector of animal specimens, active in the west and north of Australia.

Biography

Tunney was born 11 October 1870 in

Kojonup, Western Australia Kojonup is a town south-east of Perth, Western Australia along Albany Highway in the Great Southern (Western Australia), Great Southern region. The name Kojonup refers to the "Kodja" or stone axe made by Aboriginal Australians, from the local st ...

and educated in Albany. His mother and father were Mary and James Tunney. He worked for the Post Office as a messenger, in a construction gang, and joined survey parties operating in remote regions of the state. He died near Kojonup on 10 June 1929. Before his death, Tunney was reported to have requested that his family destroy his diaries and that was his wish was fulfilled, however, the letters between Tunney and the museum's director allow some insights into his field work.

Works

Tunney began collecting for the

Western Australian Museum The Western Australian Museum is a statutory authority within the Culture and the Arts Portfolio, established under the ''Museum Act 1969''. The museum has six main sites. The state museum, now known as WA Museum Boola Bardip, officially re-ope ...

in 1895 and continued for almost twenty years. He had been given a letter of reference from the cousin of the museum's director, Bernard Woodward, a geologist who he had met while surveying. The museum's taxidermist, O. Lipfert, taught him the art of preserving skins of mammals and birds for their collection. He also was commissioned to supply specimens of moths and butterflies for Nathan Rothschild at the Tring Museum and Syphonaptera to an authority on fleas,

Victor Rothschild Nathaniel Mayer Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild (31 October 1910 – 20 March 1990) was a British banker, scientist, intelligence officer during World War II, and later a senior executive with Royal Dutch Shell and N M Rothschild & So ...

. Tunney's first expeditions were to the Southwest of the state, later traveling to the Northwest, Kimberley region, and across the North to

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Compan ...

. Many of the specimens he collected were unknown to science, and his name was commemorated in the descriptions of these. These include new taxa by the ornithologist

G. M. Mathews Gregory Macalister Mathews CBE FRSE FZS FLS (10 September 1876 – 27 March 1949) was an Australian-born amateur ornithologist who spent most of his later life in England. Life He was born in Biamble in New South Wales the son of Robert H. M ...

, and the accolades of authors such as

Oldfield Thomas Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (21 February 1858 – 16 June 1929) was a British zoologist. Career Thomas worked at the Natural History Museum on mammals, describing about 2,000 new species and subspecies for the first time. He was appoin ...

when naming '' Rattus tunneyi''. Amongst the specimens he collected was an echidna, later identified as the western long-beaked echidna ''

Zaglossus bruijnii The western long-beaked echidna (''Zaglossus bruijnii'') is one of the four extant echidnas and one of three species of '' Zaglossus'' that occurs in New Guinea. Originally described as ''Tachyglossus bruijnii'', this is the type species of ''Zag ...

''. A later paper concluded that there had been a label switch and Tunney actually collected a short-beaked echidna ''

Tachyglossus aculeatus The short-beaked echidna (''Tachyglossus aculeatus''), also called the short-nosed echidna, is one of four living species of echidna and the only member of the genus ''Tachyglossus''. It is covered in fur and spines and has a distinctive snout ...

''.

Woodward loosely instructed Tunney to gather cultural material of the Aboriginal peoples, encountered while he was obtaining biological specimens, and the 'John Tunney Collection' became the foundation of the museum's records and exhibits of the local inhabitants. The methods of collection were not specified by Woodward or recorded by Tunney and this amounted to an indiscriminate and casually assembled series of objects. Tunney was untrained and inexperienced in science or anthropology, beyond his employment and obvious care as a biological collector, and did not continue to contribute to this area of research.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tunney, John 1870 births 1929 deaths Australian naturalists Zoological collectors People from Kojonup, Western Australia