Category: museums

She Sells Seashells…

Seashell Collecting Display

These seashells, part of an original Victorian collection, are now on display in the Cole Museum of Zoology. The Museum had recently acquired four new display cases, and the volunteers were asked to fill them! The new cases now contain examples of fossil fish, specialisation in bird skulls, variation in beetles and my Victorian seashells.

Seashell Collecting Display

These are some of the boxes containing the tiniest little shells, complete with original handwriting on the boxes, and newspaper underneath. Some of them list the place and date of collection, others have only the species name.

Seashell Collecting Display

I didn’t manage to get a very good photo of the entire display because of the lights reflecting on the glass, but it shows the difference between amateur and professional collections, and the variety of boxes that the shells were packed into. I wrote a little bit of information about the history of shell collecting, and Amanda (the Cole Museum Curator) added some more about the current laws regarding bringing seashells home from other countries. (If in doubt – don’t!)

I really enjoyed rummaging (carefully!) through the Cole Museum’s shells to pick out just a few for this display case. They’re still in the process of being cleaned and catalogued, and there are some real beauties.

Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

A couple of Saturdays ago we went to the Natural History Museum. We booked tickets for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition (which was the reason we’d made the trip), and also booked ourselves onto a Spirit Collection Tour. There are a few things-in-jars on display in the new Darwin building, but the 30-minute behind the scenes tour was absolutely AMAZING.


Photo © Natural History Museum

The first room was quite like library storage, full of floor to ceiling grey metal shelves. There was a little map on the end of each row, to show where you are and what’s in each cupboard. We learned that “Xenarthra” is the latin name for the group of mammals that includes sloths, anteaters and armadillos. (There was only one cupboard of those.) My favourite thing was the Victorian onion jar that was full of tiny opposums. Bless. (My least favourite was the stomach contents of a dolphin. Yuk.) Apparently the museum spends a fortune on specialist glassware for the Spirit Collection, so they re-use old jars as often as they can. I’d never seen mammals in a spirit collection before, which was interesting. It hadn’t occurred to me that of course in taxidermy you’re getting rid of all the internal organs and soft tissue, so you need spirit collections to preserve those aspects.

The second room was more like a lab, with shelves around the walls for the jars that are much too big to go in the cupboards. Mostly these contained large fish, or great big snakes in very long, thin jars – hence the need for specialist glassware. There were maybe a dozen enormous closed stainless steel vats, one of which apparently contained a male orangutan that had died recently at a zoo. There were three echinda nestled together in a jar, a rather startled-looking fox, and lots of rays each with a piece of paper tucked inside their gills. The highlight of that room was “Archie” the giant squid. She was stored in a glass tank which ran the entire length of the room. Absolutely amazing. There was also a small cabinet with some of Darwin’s original specimens from the Beagle voyage, which was pretty exciting too.

The tour is free, although you do need to sign up for a ticket in advance. I can’t recommend it highly enough! It’s also inspired me to do some volunteering at my local Zoology Museum, which I’m really looking forward to.

Natural History Museum

Natural History Museum

This is the Natural History Museum in London. Quite a typical view – looking over the central hall from the giant sequoia tree, over the top of the big dinosaur skeleton, to the statue of Darwin on the main staircase.

Usually people are so busy looking at the dinosaur that it simply doesn’t occur to them to look up.

Natural History Museum

This is the ceiling of that same central gallery, and it’s absolutely covered with the most beautiful botanical illustrations. They’re scientifically accurate, apparently, and decorated with gold that catches the light streaming in from the windows below.

Natural History Museum

This is one of the single illustrations, close to the end of the gallery with the sequoia tree. Epilobium Angustifolium is known as Fireweed in the US, or Rosebay Willowherb in the UK. The café (the one with the panda) also has these single illustrations above it.

Natural History Museum

This olive tree is right above the famous dinosaur skeleton, and is one of many images – mostly of larger trees – which spread across six panels like this.

I found out about the ceiling while I was watching the Museum of Life programme, which made me want to know much more about the Museum’s collections than they have on display. I’d been hoping to go on a Spirit Collection Tour, but apparently it’s not safe to run them when the weather’s too hot, so I’ll have to do that another time.

My favourite part about the Natural History Museum is that it’s completely free. This allows you to really take your time when you visit, knowing that you can go back any time and it won’t cost you a fortune. Well worth the train fare to London, and I really must remember to go more often!

Slender Loris.

Slender Loris Skeleton

This skinny little fellow is the skeleton of a Slender Loris.

One of the projects I’m currently working on as a volunteer is rebuilding the website for the Cole Museum of Zoology, so I thought it would be useful to go and have a look around. I’m so glad I did!

If you’re freaked out by skeletons or things-in-jars then you might not like it, but it’s a fabulously interesting place. The room is dominated by the skeletons of an indian elephant and a false killer whale.

Because I’m a lover of monkeys, I spent most of my time looking at the incredible variety in all of the different primate skeletons on display. The slender loris is a prosimian, which means that he’s related to lemurs. You can tell from those amazing eye sockets that he’s nocturnal. And just look at his adorable little hands and feet!

The slender loris is classed as a “vulnerable” species, but as of yesterday there’s one more – a baby slender loris was born at London Zoo!

Of course a loris in the zoo isn’t the same thing as a loris in the wild – but at least this little fellow can be studied in ways which might be of benefit to his Sri Lankan cousins.

If primates aren’t your preference, you can see plenty of other exhibits at the Cole Museum. I particularly enjoyed looking at the insides of a squid. A warning for the phobic though – there are plenty of snakes and spiders.

If you fancy going and having a look, the museum is on the Whiteknights campus of the University of Reading, on the ground floor of the AMS tower. (The tall one, to the left of the Palmer Building.) There’s a lot of building work going on at the moment, but the museum is still accessible through the right hand door. It’s open Monday to Friday, 9:30-5. Here’s a map.

I really enjoyed my quick visit this morning, and I’ll definitely be going back!