Inspiration for working in Natural History

Working for a museum and working with their natural history collections is something that I have wanted to do since I left university. I did wander through the bird galleries of the old Hancock museum as a girl and marvel at the different animals that existed in the world. (Not that every species was displayed as there are millions.) I loved the sounds and smells of the old building. Studying Zoology, I spent most of my fourth year taking lectures in the university museum at Dundee which was essentially a room with some natural history objects in old cases located around the room’s perimeter. I loved looking at the skulls and deducing which animal they came from.

The Great North Museum: Hancock holds a vast number of objects that range from the insects and beetles to the large bird and animal mounts. There are skeletons and taxidermied specimens, specimens preserved in alcohol, and specimens stored as skins. There are also fossils of animals that lived in the region in prehistoric times. All of these specimens need to be cared for and look after for future generations.

Some of the objects in the collection were prepared by the great taxidermists of their time, such as John Hancock, whom the original museum was named after. Also, mammal and bird mounts were prepared by Roland Ward who was an important taxidermist in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. All of the objects are a record of the species that existed at a particular location at a particular point in time. Museums hold examples of species that have become extinct or endangered in modern times.

John Hancock’s Bird of Paradise

John Hancock’s Bird of Paradise

Working with the collections has allowed me to get very close to some of the objects, including the time when we packed up the whole museum during the redevelopment.  In the past I was charged with the job of checking the condition of the mounts that we used to keep in our “Abel’s Ark” display. This involved checking for signs of pests such as moths and cleaning the specimens. In this display we had a number of deer, a Colobus monkey and a red panda, as well as a polar bear and a male lion. How many jobs allow you to get that close to an actual lion? Most of the animals that were in Abel’s Ark are now found in the “Living Planet” gallery.

Red Panda in the “Abel’s Ark” Gallery

Red Panda in the “Abel’s Ark” Gallery

During my museum career I have been able to meet with groups such as NatSCA who are the Natural Sciences Collections Association. These are like minded people who work in museums who come together to discuss issues within the museums service. They are also a brilliant group to know because all of the members come from most institutions around the country, so if you need some help or advice with a natural history related issue they can usually help. Their website is a great way of accessing information about the group and seeing what events they have coming up. We are having the next NatSCA AGM at the Great North Museum: Hancock next May.

One of my favourite collections at the Great North Museum: Hancock has to be the Osteology collection. The bones of the skeletons all have a specific function, and their form is so precise to allow the animal to move in the exact way it has to in order to survive in its habitat. I find this amazing.

Crocodile skull

Crocodile skull

Great North Museum: Hancock Library

Focus on the collections – The Cowen Library

There are three collections in the Library, the library and archives of the Natural History Society of Northumbria, the library of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Cowen Library. Over my next three blogs I will look at each collection – in this blog I’ll tell you a bit more about the Cowen Library.

 The Cowen Library was originally housed in the Museum of Antiquities and started life as a small collection to aid the curatorial staff. It became Newcastle University’s archaeology departmental library when the department was formed in 1972. The library was named after John D. Cowen, a noted amateur archaeologist and past president of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, who donated his own collection of books in 1976. The Cowen Library now contains around 7,000 books and a subject specific range of journals and offprints.

Main subject areas include archaeology, ancient history and classics. Areas of particular strength are Roman Britain including social and military history, local archaeology, archaeological theory and methodology, and the history and archaeology of the Byzantine Empire. Of particular local interest are books on Hadrian’s Wall ranging from the mid 18th century through to newly published material. These books are also complemented by books in the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne’s library (more about that collection in my next blog).

Everyone is welcome to look at any of the Cowen Library books in the Great North Museum: Hancock Library and they are available to borrow if you are a member of Newcastle University. The books are catalogued on the University catalogue  so it’s easy to see what books we have.

For current Great North Museum: Hancock library opening times please visit the Museum’s website.

New books in the Cowen Library

Here are just some of the books that arrived this summer:

 

A history of Byzantium 2nd ed. / Gregory, 2010

A history of the later Roman empire AD 284-641 / Mitchell, 2007

At empire’s edge: exploring Rome’s Egyptian frontier / Jackson, 2002

The transformation of rural England: farming and the landscape 1700-1870 / Williamson, 2002

Eating and drinking in roman Britain / Cool, 2006

History and material culture / Harvey (ed.), 2009

The Roman imperial coinage, vol. 10 / Kent, 1994

Byzantine trade, 4th-12th centuries / Mango (ed.), 2009

British prehistoric rock art / Beckensall, 2002

A place to believe in : locating medieval landscapes / Lees and Overing (eds), 2006

Hadrian’s Wall : archaeological research by English Heritage 1976-2000 / Wilmott (ed.), 2009

Haltonchesters : excavations directed by J.P. Gillam at the Roman fort, 1960-61 / Dore, 2010

 

Shoemaking craze hits fashionable society

Here is a photograph of a slipper table that we have in the museum collection.

I didn’t know anything about slipper tables until this week when I got an email from a postgraduate student in Dublin. She is researching the largely undocumented shoemaking craze which swept through fashionable society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Noreen had found small hobby toolkits but had never heard of a slipper table until she got in touch with us. She was excited to that there is a piece of furniture was dedicated to the hobby because it suggests that it was more than a passing fad for the owner.

I ventured up a ladder in the store to look in the drawers of the table and have taken lots of photographs of the tools and sent them on to Noreen.  

The wooden last

The wooden last

 

The tools from the drawer

The tools from the drawer

My curiosity was piqued and I asked Noreen to tell me more. She sent me this information. ‘Shoemaking became popular as a pastime among women of all classes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This was partly due to the simplification of footwear – namely the disappearance of heels in neoclassical fashion. Toolkits were made to meet the demand for DIY shoemaking and some contained beautifully made tools. The activity was derided by some for being unfeminine and an unsuitable diversion for a well bred lady.’

Noreen is now investigating the names stamped into the wooden shoe lasts and thanks to the photographs she has a better understanding of how the tools were used.

Maker's stamp

Maker's stamp

For my part I loved seeing the names written in ink on the wooden lasts and I am hoping Noreen will keep me updated with information she finds out about the shoemaking craze.

the wooden last with ink writing on

the wooden last with ink writing on

The mystery of Horsfield’s Bronze Cuckoo

It’s great to do some hands on research from time to time. There’s a bird skin in the collection that I’ve been looking at recently. This is a specimen of a bird called Horsfield’s Bronze Cuckoo. Holding it up to the light, the iridescent greenish bronze colour is still visible on the feathers of the bird’s back. Otherwise it’s small, brown and heavy barred underneath.

So, other than being a good example of this species, why is the skin of interest? Well, this is an Australasian bird, normally found on the Australian continent, as well as the Malay peninsular, New Guinea and some nearby islands. However, the record for this specimen indicates that this particular bird was collected in the Seychelles – a very long way across the ocean from Australia.

The red dot shows the location of the Seychelles. The landmass at the bottom right of the image is Australia.

The red dot shows the location of the Seychelles. The landmass at the bottom right of the image is Australia.

It seems almost unbelievable that such a small thing could survive a journey of this vast distance. Holding the bird, it’s easy to feel some sympathy for it. There’s something incredibly compelling about the image of a tiny bird, far out at sea, flying on and on in search of land.

However, such journeys are surprisingly common. In the past, oil rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico were stunned to see swarms of ping-pong ball sized Ruby Throated Hummingbirds zipping past, hundreds of miles from the shore. We now know that this is the regular route of the birds’ spring migration. The recent visit of an Eastern Crowned Warbler to an old quarry on the coast near South Shields is another example of a small bird making a mammoth journey. Both these birds are a lot smaller than our cuckoo.

However, no one on the Seychelles has ever seen a Horsfield’s Bronze Cuckoo before or since. This bird is the only one ever recorded, and given that it’s such a long way from home, we really need to be sure that we’ve got the facts right.

 So, what’s the story of our specimen? The original label mentions a ‘Messrs Galbraith’. A look at the Accession Book from 1887 shows that this bird is one of a consignment of ‘26 birds in spirits’ donated to the Natural History Society of Northumbria by a ‘Mssrs Galbraith. Seychelles’. So far, so good.

Original label

Original label

So who were Mssrs Galbraith? According to Robert Prys-Jones of the Natural History Museum there was at least one Galbraith, a vanilla plantation owner called S.J Galbraith, living in the Seychelles in the 1880s. So it seems as if this man sent us his collection of birds in spirits (preserved in jars of alcohol), including the cuckoo. But the link between the bird, the man, the location and the collection is not crystal clear. Is the donor the man we know of, or someone else entirely? How did he come by the birds? Why did he give them to the society?

There’s another twist to this story.  In a letter in the archives of the Natural History Society of Northumbria dated 25 Feb 1875, there’s a mention of a firm of London shipping agents called ‘Messrs Galbraith, Stringer & Pembroke.’ So, does the entry in the accession register actually refer to the shipping agents who delivered the birds from the Seychelles?

The original accession book entry from 1875

The original accession book entry from 1875

25 other skins were part of the same acquisition – can they help us get to the bottom of the mystery? A quick search reveals that all but three of these seem to have disappeared. The surviving three; two Seychelles Kestrels and a Seychelles Blue Pigeon are all endemic to the Seychelles. It’s therefore very unlikely that they where collected elsewhere. 

So what can we say? 

The original documentation suggests to us that this bird came from the Seychelles. Other specimens in the same acquisition certainly did. We know that someone called Galbraith was living there at the time. Although the bird’s regular range is a vast distance away, similar examples of birds turning up unexpectedly tell us that it’s not impossible the cuckoo made it that far. This would mean that our skin is really important, because it’s a unique record of this species from the Seychelles.

On the flipside, we can’t make a connection between this specimen and S.J Galbraith. A letter in the archive suggests that the name may refer to a shipping agent rather than the donor. There’s nothing that tells us the exact circumstances of the bird’s acquisition.

Somebody living in the Seychelles with connections to the society could have sent back a collection of birds containing a variety of skins they picked up on their travels, including a cuckoo from Australia as well as some local birds. The person writing in the accession book noted down the name of the shipping agent rather than the donor, and the error was copied on the label.

So did this little bird make an epic journey across the Indian Ocean or not? The cuckoo hasn’t given up its secrets yet.

Getting stuck in

It’s great to see Unity Trust Bank being recognised for their employee engagement efforts at this year’s Business Charity Awards.

Our Business Partners have taken part in similar things over the last year and I know how rewarding they find it. Here is a picture of our most recent challenge at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens with Dickinson Dees.

Have you ever taken part in something like this at work? What did you get out of it?