|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
Botanists have been collecting vascular plants in the British Isles for scientific purposes for almost 700 years. The relative ease with which that type of material lends itself to indefinite preservation has resulted in the survival of an impressively high proportion of collections, even though in many documentation is inadequate or lacking. Since World War Two successive, still ongoing, attempts have been made to establish how many of the unitary bodies of specimens identified with particular individuals – that is herbaria in the strict sense as opposed to miscellaneous specimens – remain in being out of the total known or suspected to have once existed, and where they are now to be found. That all-time total currently stands at 2,830. Of those, 44 are known with reasonable certainty to have been destroyed but 745 remain untraced. Various reasons why many of that 745 could have escaped notice and may yet be located are discussed.
[BACK] to list of abstracts
Due to the flood of 28 September 1992, the basement of the Museo civico di Storia Naturale "Giacomo Doria", Genova (Italy), with an extension of about 2,800 square metres, was submerged by water and mud, approximately 2.7m deep. Such an event critically damaged the paleontological, mineralogical and zoological, collections of great historical and scientific interest, which were kept there.
The damage sustained was of various types – mixing of the specimens' labels and/or loss of the scientific indications; loss of the specimens; very heavy damage to the stuffed animals, in particular mammals and birds; disarticulation and dispersion of bony parts and formation of moulds; damage to the glass containers of the spirit collections, with consequent pouring out of the liquid and dispersion of the specimens; damage to the freezers placed in the museum basement, which were filled with material awaiting preparation, and partial loss of it.
The first recovery interventions done by the Museum staff and the volunteers who came for rescue are outlined. After the disaster a series of measures were adopted, aiming to protect the collections, such as the building of an intermediate floor on the basement, in order to transfer the spirit collection to a safer level, In view of the likelihood of similar disastrous events in the future. The authors briefly give an account of the techniques and the equipment used for the restoration of the collections, still under way.
[BACK] to list of abstracts
It is now more than a century since the adoption of the first international treaty intended to protect scientific, including natural history, collections (the 1899 Hague Convention on the Laws of War), though there is a much longer history of international legal measures aiming to protect works of art, antiquities and historic monuments.
Subsequent international measures aimed at establishing and enforcing principles and practice in what has become known as cultural property law have gradually extended the principles of protection and respect, most notably the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention, the 1999 Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention, while there may also be some assistance from the planned International Criminal Court Statutes of 1998.
However, despite their explicit application to scientific material and collections, these legal instruments have been almost invariably regarded as measures to protect works of art, antiquities and important buildings and monuments, and their equal relevance and application to scientific collections and specimens has rarely been discussed, and does not appear to be widely known and understood. This paper outlines and discusses these and other existing international legal instruments, and considers possible future developments that could improve legal support for the protection of natural history collections at the international level.
[BACK] to list of abstracts
Since 1799 The Royal College of Surgeons has been the custodian of the museum collection of John Hunter FRS (1728-1793). Hunter's collection and his reputation as a scientist-surgeon helped to legitimise the institutional role of the College in the early 19th century. Through the work of successive conservators - notably Richard Owen, John Quekett and William Flower - the museum became established as a centre for active research in comparative anatomy, osteology and microscopy.
The conventional end to this story is provided by the havoc wreaked by bombing in 1941. However in many ways Hunter's collection had disappeared long before, subsumed beneath the material collected by his successors. This paper looks at the ways in which the ideal of the Hunterian Collection flourished in the 19th and early 20th century even while its physical presence and practical utility diminished. It traces the pattern of acquisitions, disposals and transfers between 1799 and 1950 to demonstrate the relative significance of the original Hunterian preparations. In particular it highlights the distribution of specimens as 'Hunterian souvenirs' in the 1930s as an indication of the metaphorical rather than scientific importance attached to the Hunterian collection at that time.
The paper concludes with an examination of the decision-making in the aftermath of 1941 which led to the construction of the present Hunterian Museum (opened in 1963), and at current plans for a œ3 million redisplay highlighting the 3700 surviving Hunterian specimens.
[BACK] to list of abstracts
Some account of the founding and aims of the Societe d'Acclimatation, its collection of wild animals and the end of wild-animal keeping there. Finally, some discussion of the role of the Jardin in the development of modern zoo-keeping.
[BACK] to list of abstracts
In the sixteenth-century Western Europe natural history and collecting were fashionable – not only at court or among the wealthy but also among men and women who belonged to the middle and even lower classes. This is manifest from the manuscripts written and richly illustrated by Adriaen Coenen (1514–1587) from Scheveningen near The Hague – son of a local fisherman and largely self-taught. They demonstrate not only levels of popular expertise regarding marine nature and its depiction, but also show (among many other things) to what extent and how rapidly international scientific knowledge of the period (as represented by the works of Belon, Rondelet and Gessner, for instance) reached a wider audience. Adriaen Coenen wrote and illustrated three manuscripts: one seems to be lost since the sixteenth century – perhaps it can still be found somewhere in Europe; two big ones remain in libraries in The Hague and Antwerp (a further fragment has recently surfaced in Cologne, and some loose leafs are held in a private Dutch collection). One way of studying these manuscripts is to regard them as natural history collections on paper: the portable collection of a man who was not wealthy enough himself to own a big collection of curious naturalia. Whereas many naturalia-collections of the sixteenth century are lost to us now, much of this portable paper collection remains.
[BACK] to list of abstracts
Australian bird collections are difficult for Australian researchers to study, as most pre-twentieth century material is housed in museums in Europe and America. Some of this material is in the form of paintings rather than actual specimens, and some of these paintings are difficult to identify to known species (to say the least). The most notorious of these early paintings are those done at the end of the eighteenth century by convicts of the First Fleet, who were more likely to have gained their artistic training in forgery rather than ornithology. A set of volumes of these paintings in private hands, known as "The Lambert Drawings" have some plates whose identity is still under fierce discussion. Two of these are the "Weebong Shrike" and the "Agile Honeyeater". Were they just very badly drawn, or is it possible that they are of species now extinct?
The slightly later material collected by John Gould and John Gilbert in Australia between 1838 and 1845 is also problematical. Gould was an ardent businessman who used his specimens as commodities and sold them to any museum who would buy them. Many are now in the back of drawers in small local museums. A haul of foreign birds from a small Lancashire museum was recently transferred to the Liverpool Museum. Amongst these were several Australian birds with original Gould and Gilbert field labels and sadly several of these important specimens (such as a Grey Thickhead Pachycephala pectoralis, collected by John Gould himself in South Australia in 1839) had no heads. A search for detached bird heads in all corners of the original museum was immediately instigated. The moral of this story is never to throw anything away.
[BACK] to list of abstracts
What may be termed the LGC (Lost Gibraltar Collection) were collected by John White at Gibraltar in the period 1769–1772. Shipped to Gilbert White at Selborne, Hampshire, in a series of seven cargoes, it comprised birds, insects, and fish, together with some plant material and meteorological journals. The overst purpose of the entire collection was to provide material for a 'Fauna Calpensis', to be prepared by John White. Although this work was never published (and other than the introduction is no longer extant), an effective outcome occurred in terms of the stimulus the whole project gave to Gilbert White – and to the assembly and study of the natural history in his own parish of Selborne, and hence to the publication of Selborne (1789).
[BACK] to list of abstracts
The Mauritius Institute, founded in the early 1800s, represents the oldest natural museum in the southern hemisphere. Founded by Julien Desjardins in August 1829, it originally contained hundreds of very rare and unique specimens of Mascarene fauna. In the early years of the last century, the collector Thirioux found some of the most important extinct bird and reptile specimens, of which he sent some to Alfred Newtown in Cambridge for identification. After a few years he offered Newton the entire collection for a fee. Newton only offered £20 so Thirioux sold the collection to the Mauritius Institute for £80. Over the next 80 years the collection gradually disappeared through neglect culminating with the recently deceased director actually throwing out specimens wholesale. The only surviving specimens now in the Institute are two dodos and the unique skeletons of Aphanapteryx (red rail) and the giant skink (although many parts have fallen off and are now missing). More importantly, Thirioux listed all and photographed some of the original collection. This included the only known bones of a juvenile dodo, plus very important elements from the other extinct Mauritian birds.
[BACK] to list of abstracts
 |
[TOP] • Home • About SHNH • Publications • Meetings • How to Join • News • Links • Site Map |
© SHNH 13/12/02