Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The History of the Collections Contained in the Natural History Departments of the British Museum: Birds
Under these circumstances, which we trust to see materially altered when the zoological collections are moved to their new home in South Kensington, it is more than creditable to our zoologists that they should have turned out the large amount of scientific work that has issued from their department of the British Museum during the past thirty years.
The collections of Bird-skins were packed in boxes, which were arranged in book-cases, some round the wall of the assistant-keeper's study, others in the dark passage by which the Insect-room was approached. As the collection of big birds increased, larger wooden boxes were provided, which were placed in racks in the same outside passage, and in the recesses behind the Bird-gallery upstairs, each box requiring two men to carry it; but these larger boxes were constructed after Gray's death, with a View to the transference of the collection from Bloomsbury to South Kensington. Some idea of the increase in the collection of Bird-skins between the years 1872 and 1883 may be gained from the fact that, in the former year, the specimens of Birds of Prey, or Accipitres, occupied only a few wooden boxes, and were all contained within a single book - case in the, Insect-room passage. Eleven years later, when they were removed to South Kensington, these birds occupied 108 boxes, measuring 3 x 123: x 1 ft., each requiring two men to lift it. They now fill thirty great cabinets, extending down one entire side of the Bird-room in the Natural History Museum.
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