RESISTING THE BUG

The formation and long term viability of a collection of natural history was dependant on one being able to preserve the specimen for its longevity. After all, the objective of any private collection, regardless of the subject matter for the owner, was about accumulation and presentation.

Whilst shells and minerals, for example, had no natural enemies, the skins of mammals and birds would almost inevitably be destroyed over time by the depredation of insects. The establishment of stable long-term collections were therefore impossible to guarantee.
There had been many attempts by people to produce a process capable of protecting the longevity of prepared specimens, yet in turn not itself harm the specimens it was meant to protect.
lt was not until about 1771 that a apothecary and naturalist by the name of Jean -Baptise Becour of Metz France, succeeded in developing a mixture of powdered white arsenic, soap, salt of tartar, camphor and powdered lime, that worked as an effective agent against insect destruction. Becour’s formula was kept a closely guarded secret, however and it was many years afterwards before it became generally available for use by other practitioners.

Whilst it is uncertain as to who may have been the first commercial taxidermist entity in Europe, amongst documents from Charles Wilson Peale dated 1792, there is a letter to a Thomas Hall of Moorfields offering to trade or purchase specimens prepared by Thomas Hall himself. One may conclude that Hall was already a commercial practitioner of sorts, conducting trade through commercial sales and exchanges of articles of taxidermy and that more likely, his practice dated even earlier than the date of this document.

Science and society yearned to learn more about the existence of animals beyond the coast of Europe. As early as 1660, England had formed its first scientific society, The Royal Society, a prestigious scientific society founded for the promotion of natural knowledge. By the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution had fuelled the widespread interest of all branches of science, which included amongst others, the study of physics, mechanical science and optics. The need for a more specific Society to deal with matters relevant to the fields of zoology and botany instigated the formation of a few specialised societies founded by learned naturalists, but most did not last long and few publications were ever published. In 1788, the Linnean Society named after the Swedish scientist, Carl Linnaeus was founded in London, with the stated purpose of “ the cultivation of the science of Natural History.” It too was to soon disappoint the hopes of scientists by concentrating more upon the field of botany than on the broader science of natural history, a direction not surprising, after all the society was named after a Swedish Botanist. Frustrated at the pace at which papers describing new species were being published and released by the Society, a number of Fellows started the Zoological Club of the Linnean Society in 1822 .

Birds had always been a popular form of animal to collect and as such, numerous books with hand-colored plates had already been published in Britain, far outstripping those of any other animal group. Early British authors of the eighteenth century of the likes of Eleazar Albin, George Edwards, Peter Brown, John Latham and later in the centaury William Lewin, drafted illustrations for their hand-colored ornithological publications either from references made of living birds, or by the aid and use of preserved bird skins. In France, their counterparts in other important ornithological works included such famous names as Pierre Joseph Buc'hoz, de Buffon and Francois Levaillant.

By the turn of the nineteenth century better methods of preservation and taxidermy were being developed permitting artists to make more accurate representations of birds from specimens of species they had often never seen alive before .The result was that the standard of ornithological illustrations was significantly raised fuelling the demand from wealthy noblemen and businessmen to purchase such grand illustrated works that were to eventually come from the likes of John James Audobon, Edward Lear and the most famous of all bird illustrators, John Gould.

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