91av

Nature’s Connections by Nicola McGirr, The Natural History Museum,
£12.95, ISBN 0565091441

ZEUS has a lot to answer for. Each of his nine nights of sexual athletics
with Mnemosyne resulted in a daughter, a collective achievement we refer to as
the Muses. The names of two daughters found a place in our
language—Terpsichore, muse of choral dancing, and Urania, muse of
astronomy. Each of the nine presided over a distinct field of thought. So to
“muse” is to ponder thoughtfully, and a museum is home to the Muses—that
is, to all the manifestations of human thought and imagination. Nicola McGirr
has attempted to put an entire museum into a book. Her target is London’s
Natural History Museum, which has its roots deep in the past.

Early museums were private affairs, wooden “arks” or cabinets where
thoughtful people kept collections of curious objects. The first pictures, such
as Johann Kentmann’s 1565 catalogue of his fossil objects, show strange mixtures
of the animate and inanimate, with rocks, shark’s teeth, exotic feathers and
artefacts all jumbled together. They remind me of the strange assortment of
objects children treasure. Although the intellectually curious collector was the
forerunner of today’s professional scientist, museum collections soon became the
preserve of the cream of society. Menageries for the quick and museums for the
dead became an ideal way for the influential and well-to-do to advertise their
status

By the 18th century more humble people were collecting, too, but some viewed
the pursuit of knowledge rather than the display of wealth as their goal.
Physicians, for example, often became fascinated by natural history, sometimes
to the neglect of their medical duties. One of the best-known of these
collectors was London’s Hans Sloane who died in 1753. Distinguished in medicine
and science, he was to be president of both the Royal Society and what is now
the Royal College of Physicians.

Sloane’s eclectic private collection was a fine one. Although it was
protected by an act of Parliament, the only way the money could be raised to
house it was via the 18th-century equivalent of a national lottery. Even so, it
began to deteriorate, overcrowded by additions.

They did things differently in continental Europe. There, royal or imperial
patronage saw to it that natural history was well supported and well housed. In
Britain it was left to scientists such as Thomas Huxley to champion the cause of
a national museum. But Huxley’s enthusiasm wasn’t enough: Sloane’s objects,
known by then as the British Museum collections, remained at risk for many
years.

It wasn’t until the German Prince Albert, Victoria’s consort, became involved
that the project began to gel. London’s Natural History Museum, Alfred
Waterhouse’s splendid architectural celebration of life on Earth, was finally
opened to the public in 1881.

In Nature’s Connections McGirr tackles not only the history, role
and activities of the Natural History Museum in London, but also gives us a
history of natural history itself and an account of the process and practice of
modern natural science. This succeeds as a lavishly illustrated and very
readable account. You’ll end up with a far better understanding of what goes on
behind the locked doors that separate the public from the scientists and
exhibition staff.

However, the book is weak on human biology. This means that McGirr fails to
emphasise the strength of the links between medicine and natural history. Many
of the Natural History Museum’s finest human osteological collections, for
example, are on permanent loan from the Royal College of Surgeons of England,
among them the prized Neanderthal cranium from Gibraltar (predating the
discoveries in the Neander Valley) and the Mount Carmel Caves.

But what of those muses? The word “amuse” means to be “deflected from
musing”. These days, museums sometimes cannot resist tempting visitors with
amusements. But by its support of Nature’s Connections, London’s
Natural History Museum shows clearly that it wants science, and not amusement
alone, to attract and engage the visitor. The emphasis that the book places on
science and on the scientific process, bodes well for the future. Huxley would
have been pleased.