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In 1872, Hamilton Lanphere Smith, a college professor at Hobart College in New York, published part one of what would become a three-part series entitled Conspectus of the Families and Genera of the Diatomaceae. Smith's synoptic arrangement, which separated diatoms into three tribes subsuming 15 families and 110 genera, was adopted by other diatomists, including such notables as a naturalist for the Challenger Expedition, Francesco Castracane, and the renown microscopist Henri Ferdinand Van Heurck of Belgium.
Smith's exchange of letters, books, and specimens with microscopists from around the world enabled him to publish an invaluable collection of 750 exsiccatae slides entitled Diatomaceareum Species Typicae, distributed in 100-slide sets from 1876–1888.
His private collection of several thousands of diatom slides, 4,000 bottles of cleaned diatoms, and extensive collection of diatomaceous earths was the largest in the United States, as was his personal library of microscopical literature, which contained marginalia and letters and drawings from other diatomists. Both the collection and the library were purchased by Dr Edward Francis Hodges of Indianapolis in 1893.
Fourteen years after Dr. Hodges death, the H. L. Smith slide collection and library began a final series of moves which severed the slide collection into parts and ultimately resulted in the dispersal and loss of the majority of the books, along with Smith's irreplaceable notations and the scientific correspondence of a lifetime.
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Living collections differ from museum collections, so specimens are only lost when the zoo or aquarium closes. This loss is due to a lack of records documenting the transfer of specimens to other collections; however, this lack of records can even lead to a "loss" of specimens in extant collections. Without documentation many past collections remain unknown to historians, as well as to the caretakers of present collections who are trying to conserve species through captive wildlife husbandry. American zoos and aquariums are considered specifically and there is a preliminary list of extinct institutions that also includes older names for extant zoos and aquariums.
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The second law of thermodynamics, a product of the mid-nineteenth century, spawned a number of contemporary analogical commentaries including, most notably, Dickens' Bleak House. But if one had wanted a physical representation of this law at that time, one need have looked no further than at collections in museums across Britain. While great effort had been put into representing a whole raft of scientific concepts in these museums, collections could, with no effort at all, demonstrate this one revolutionary law; chaos was their natural condition. As entities established to transcend time, inevitably collections became representations of the past – not just of past science but of outmoded views of society and social interaction. When integral to cultural change, as they had been, for example, in the 1820s, collections had grown, and while that growth was accompanied by loss and disorder, the social and intellectual meaning of these collections remained assured. But, later, they became extraneous to the processes of cultural change, and fell victim to neglect. Alternatively, they were reconsidered, reconfigured and reborn as something new, which too resulted in loss. It was a process within which the application of energy in collection building created meaning and order, but when that energy was withdrawn or redirected, chaos and loss resulted. Whether considered at the macro-level of social development or the micro-level of institutional politics and organisation, cultural change forms the driving mechanism through which collection loss can be understood. Using these ideas as a framework, this paper attempts an overview of the processes of collection loss drawing upon examples from four studies of geology in English museums: a recent high resolution study of museum development in the early nineteenth century; a review of the cultural status of this science over the past two hundred years; a 1980s survey of approximately one quarter of English museum geology collections; and a new study of late twentieth‑century tensions in the collecting culture of geology in an era of conservation awareness.
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The night of 1 March 1943 was a stormy one in Berlin. An allied air raid using napalm bombs set the Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem on flames. Conventional bombs destroyed at the same time the water supply system, so that within hours a very considerable part of one of the finest collections of herbarium specimens, botanical books and journals in world was reduced to ashes. This is generally called the Dahlem Catastrophe regarded as the greatest loss of botanical specimens ever. Almost sixty years later a summary is given on what was lost in 1943, on what was destroyed in the final phase of WW II, on what has survived and how the collections were gradually built up again. This process came to an end only after the German unification with the transfer of the last part of the evacuated herbarium material.
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Although the collections of the present-day Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford are well known, in its earliest manifestation the institution was predominantly scientific in character with a strong bias towards natural history. Elements of these characteristics were inherited initially from the Tradescant collection, which formed a large part of Elias Ashmole's founding gift. These traits were reinforced by the activities of the early curators, particularly Robert Plot (1683–1691) and Edward Lhwyd (1691–1709), and by important donations stretching from Martin Lister's gift of shells in 1683 to Joshua Platt's extensive collection of fossils, given in 1765. As a museum of natural history the Ashmolean reached its zenith under the successive keeperships of the brothers J. S. Duncan (1823–1829) and P. B. Duncan (1829–1854), who overlaid the mouldering remains of the early collections with many newly acquired exhibits. Following this episode all the surviving specimens were transferred to the University's new Natural Science Museum and, with the adoption by the Ashmolean of new interests (especially in antiquities), its former character was quickly forgotten. A variety of important themes in the development of natural history are reflected in the history of these collections, from the early years in which they were rivalled only by those of the Royal Society's `repository' to their final flowering under the Duncans as a physical embodiment of the tenets of natural theology. Recent publication of the early catalogues has brought a new degree of accessibility and prominence to these data, allowing not only the present overview but the potential for further detailed work by specialist researchers.
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Basamfasal is a suburb of the town of Deir ez-Zor, located in part of northern Syrian Mesopotamia known as "The Djazireh", between the valley of the Euphrates and the Khabur river. A private collection of stuffed mammals and birds was built up, from the second half of the eighties, representing the animal life of the region. The collection comprised many species of mammals, including several specimens of Felis chaus Guldenstaedt, 1776, Lutra lutra L., 1758, Canis aureus , L., 1758, Canis lupus L., 1758, Vulpes rueppelli Schinz, 1825, Hyaena hyaena L., 1758, Sciurus anomalus Gmelin, 1778, Hystrix indica Kerr, 1792, and Gazella subgutturosa marica Thomas, 1897. Birds were represented by about 200 taxa not restricted to wetland species. Among the most important items, there was the first specimen of a naked-bellied tomb bat, Taphozous nudiventris Cretzschmar, 1830, recorded from north-eastern Syria. With hundreds of exhibits, the Basamfasal collection was representative of the whole wildlife repertoire of the Djezireh. It was destroyed in 1994, for reasons which are still not altogether clear.
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The paper deals with the occurrence of stuffed specimens of carnivores in the collections of the Greek museums, which reveal intriguing stories about their origins, especially about the islands from where they were collected. According to scientific and popular literature, these islands were often not numbered among the homelands or territories of the artificial distribution of the species. So it is almost impossible today to understand why and how certain specimens reached these islands, especially in the case of those which were dangerous predators for the livestock, and even the human population. This is the case, for example, of the Anatolian leopard, Panthera pardus tulliana Valenciennes, 1856, which has been on exhibit for several decades in the Town Hall of the island of Samos and today figures among the collections of the Natural History Museum of the Aegean, in the village of Mytelenii. On the label of the case, it is classified as kaplani, with the explanation that this is a Samian term indicating a species of panther. In reality, the word comes from the Turkish term kaplan, commonly used in Anatolia to indicate the tiger, and erroneously, some times, also the leopard.
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The wealth of migratory birds of the small island of Lampedusa (Sicilian Channel, Italy) is documented since the fifteenth century, but during the nineteenth century, one of the principal curiosities was the regular presence of cranes. Official reports recorded the occurrence of these birds from as far back as the eighteenth century, indicating the period of their presence on Lampedusa (every year between May and August), their regular nesting, and even identifying the plants they fed on, often constituting a pest for the crops. In spite of this, however, scientific literature did not succeed in defining them taxonomically; several authors described them as common cranes, Grus grus L., 1758, while others identified them as demoiselle cranes, Anthropoides virgo L., 1758. Until the first half of the twentieth century, both these species were reported as quite commonly appearing on the nearby Tunisian mainland. We must add to this the curious fact that the only two specimens of cranes collected on Lampedusa in the course of the nineteenth century which are still present in the Italian collections do not correspond to either of these cranes. The Zoological Museum of the University of Pavia and the Zoological Museum of the University of Palermo possess, respectively, one specimen of crown crane, Balearica pavonina L., 1758, "collected on Lampedusa". This is a taxon predominantly characteristic of sub-Saharian zoogeography, and which has only occasionally been recorded along the Mediterranean shores. The aim of this paper is to attempt to explore this taxonomic and zoogeographic incongruence.
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Why do collections and specimens become lost in the first place especially from museums? After all museums are supposed to preserve things for posterity, not lose them. Losses can result from natural processes, such as insect attack. After all, natural history specimens are mostly made of biodegradable materials. Losses also occur as a result of fires and wartime activity. For example the major collections, including big dioramas, that belonged to the Duke of Orleans in Paris were mostly destroyed by fire although some of the specimens were saved and are still in the Paris Museum. The famous 'nesting series' of British birds in the British Museum (London) were destroyed by enemy action during the Second World War. Private museum collections, and even public ones may be dispersed through sales and exchanges. Sometimes these can be traced using old auction records. Private collections that were built into the homes of rich people have often been destroyed when their large houses became too expensive to maintain and were pulled down. There are several significant examples of this in England, including a current one. These lost collections can never be found again, except perhaps as dispersed specimens, devoid of their historical context.
Sometimes specimens are lost because they are so old and sometimes so badly prepared, it was felt necessary to replace them. The infamous case of the Ashmolean dodo is a well-known example. However there is now a worrying possibility that specimens may become 'lost' for reasons of political correctness, where museum curators are basically hostile to taxidermy in all its forms and seek an excuse to remove preserved specimens from display and perhaps discard them altogether. This particularly applies where human remains are concerned. There appear to be very few examples of humans prepared by taxidermy methods, and one of these has recently been ceremonially repatriated to Africa, buried with full military honours, and is now lost forever. Others may be 'lost' by storing them in attics or basements until such times as they disintegrate. They can then be thrown away. This type of attitude is reprehensible in museum curators who should be protecting specimens for generations to come, not editing them because of the sensitivities of this generation. It is also illogical, bearing in mind that museums exhibit with pride specimens of Egyptian mummies and shrunken heads. The preserved corpse of Lenin was also on public display for over half a century.
Specimens can be lost or indeed whole collections, but documentary evidence or photographs remain. Sometimes the specimens survive, but separated from their documentary context they lose much of their significance. I have been able to trace interesting association documents for some taxidermy specimens which greatly add to their interest and value.
My own special interest in taxidermy has led me to seek out specimens which appeared to be lost, in the hope they might actually still be extant. Among these are some of the specimens that were on show at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. These include a set of tableaux, illustrating the story of Reynard the fox, which were brought to London by a German taxidermist, Herman Ploucquet. These were subsequently sold and now after 150 years some have been traced, but where are the rest?
What has happened to the specimens depicted in some of the famous illustrations of 17th-century museums for example the Calceolarian Museum in Verona or the Imperial Museum in Naples? An illustration of the latter, dated 1672, shows a crocodile suspended from the ceiling. I am grateful to Carlo Violani for sending me details of a crocodile which still hangs in the ceiling of the Church in Italy evidently having been there since about 1594.
This is the oldest example of taxidermy I have so far been able to trace. Crocodiles and stuffed fish are relatively indestructible, ancient specimens of birds are likely to have been destroyed long ago, and thereby lost without prospect of ever being found again. The oldest example I have found of a bird which could be considered as taxidermy is an African grey parrot in Westminster Abbey, London. This appears to have been preserved in 1702. The oldest wild mammal I have traced is a red deer in the hunting Museum, Horsholm (Denmark), which dates from the late 17th-century. However there are a number of horses that are older than this. One in Copenhagen dates from 1684 and another in Stockholm was preserved in 1633. This horse had belonged to king Gustav Adolphus and was a replacement for the one shot from under him during a siege at Ingolstadt on the Danube in 1632 which also still exists. But the oldest example of mammal taxidermy that I have found so far is a horse belonging to the Archduke Ferdinand. This has been 'lost' in biological terms, because it is not in a Natural History Museum, but has been 'found' in the Museum of the army in Brussels. The specimen died in 1600 from a fatal bullet wound that would otherwise have killed the Archduke himself. Being preserved for 400 years was the horse's reward.
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