The Ashmolean as a museum of natural history, 1683-1860

Arthur MacGregor

For a period of almost two centurles the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford functioned as an integrated

scientific institution, combining a conventional museum display with a chemlcal laboratory and a school Downloaded from of natural history. The history of the collection of naturalla is examined here In terms of three principal phases: dunng the earliest of these the character of the displays as revealed by contemporary catalogues was largely conditioned by the collection's genesis in a seventeenthentury cabinet of curiosities; In the second phase, centred early In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Impact of

Linnaeus began to make Itself kit; in the third phase, occupying the second quarter of the nineteenth http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ century, the entire collectlon was redisplayed as an exposition of natural theology. Finally, by 1860 the natural specimens were transferred from the Ashmolean, leaving a much reduced collectlon of man- made objects from which the Museum in rts current form was later relaunched.

EVERYONEwho knows the presentday Ashmolean a repository of man-made curiosities in the mid Museum, with its rich displays of art and archae- nineteenth century; following the removal in 18h ology, knows too that the ongins of the Museum's of the Ashmolean's coin collections to the Mleian at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 collections lay in the cabinet of curiosities amassed Library and of the ethnographic specimens in 1886 by the Tradescants, father and son, during the earlier to the newly founded Pitt Rivers Museum, it was part of the seventeenth century and donated to the from this much redud rump that the reconstruc- University of Oxford by Etias Ashmole m 1683. tion of the Ashmolean in its presentday form was While there has long been a generalized appreciation launched. of the multi-faceted character of the early displays in the Ashmolean and although the continuing survival of the early catalogues has been a matter of record, it The prehistory of the Ashmolean's natural has only been with the publication of those invent- history collections ories in recent months, including translations of their It was of course as practical plantsmen that John Latin texts, that they have become accessible for Tradescant the elder (died 1638) and his son of the wide study.' From the details contained in the early same name (1608-62) earned their livlngs and their catalogues and from a number of surviving donors' considerable reputations. Numerous inductions of lists and other manuscript sources, together with the exotic species are credited to them by authors such as Museum's first p~tedcatalogue of 18~6,' we can Thomas Johnson and John Parkinson,' and it is clear now flesh out something of the development of the that the garden they established at Lambeth from the collections up to the point where nineteenthxentury Late 1620s functioned as a collection of Living rarities university-wide rationalization and reform led to the to complement the curiosities of art and nature extinction of the Ashmolean as predominantly a exhibited in their museum, aptly titled The Ark. museum of natural history and to the transfer of Little evidence survives to suggest that the Trades- those elements of its collections in the 1850s to cants were very systematic in acquiring natural speci- Oxford's newly founded Natural Science Museum. mens for their museum: in a plea for new materials What follows ~san attempt to reconstruct the now- circulated in 1625 the father reveals a preoccupation vanished character of the Ashmolean from its incep only with impressive size and with curiosity, as, for tion as a proto-scientific institution to its reduction to example, a 'Seacowes head the Bigest that Canbe ARTHUR MACGREGOR

Gotten . . . the Greatest sorts of Shell fishes . . 'wherof some are called Mollta, some Crustacea, Great flying fishes & Sucking fishes withe what els others Testacea\ acknowledged as including 'both strangle]'.4 umvalvta and hvalvta' The'Severall sorts of Insects, None the less, by virtue of the ever-increasing terrestrial' that conclude the zoological section are range, the wide geographical scope and the rarity of similarly divided up according to class - 'anelytra, many of the exhibits, the Tradescant collection came coleoptera, aptera, apoda'. to be acknowledged as an important scientific re- The contents of several pages of entries headed source, so that John Ray, for example, in his revision Fosstlta are again very mixed, as acknowledged by sub- of Francis Willughby's Ornithology (1678), made use headings for 'Earths, Coralls, Salts, Bitumens, Petri- of the specimens there to verify certain features of fied things, choicer Stones, Gemmes'. Rather more the dodo and other exotic birds which were then to native sources are acknowledged here, including Downloaded from 5 be found nowhere else in England. Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Cambridgeshire and Kent In the catalogue of the collection, published with Some eight pages of 'Outlandish Fruits from both Ashmole's sponsorship in 1656 and compiled in part the Indies' conclude the account of the naturalia, by Ashmole and Dr Thomas Wharton in association together with 'Seeds, Gummes, Roots, Woods, and with the younger Tradescant, the importance of the divers Ingredients Medicinall, and for the Art of http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ natural history element is immediately apparent.6 Dying'; the latter are arranged by colour and include None the less, the nature of some of the entries both organic and inorganic materials. makes quantification somewhat speculative. Amongst Scattered elsewhere are a few miscellaneous items the birds, for example, are some thirty entries for such as the 'Indian morrice bells' recorded there by 'Whole Birds', but they include descriptions such as Johnson, made, we are told, in the Cannibal Islands 'Birds of Paradise . . . whereof divers sorts, some of the West Indies from the dried and hollowed-out 7 with, some without leggs', and 'Many rare and cases of fruits into which pebbles had been inserted beautifull Indian birds, not found described in to make them rattle.9 Whole plant specimens appear at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 authors'. A sub-section for eggs includes 'Divers to have been rare in the museum itself: if there were sorts of Egges from Turkie' one given for a Dragons herbaria in the collection we cannot detect them.10 egge', and 'Easter Egges of the Patriarchs of Jerusa- lem'. Other sub-sections list 'Feathers' (including 'Two feathers from the Phoenix tayle'); 'Claws', in The founding of the Ashmolean which category the most exotic of the twenty-five In the era when Elias Ashmole inherited the Tra- specimens must be that of 'the bird Rock; who as descant collection and formally proposed its donation Authors report, is able to trusse an Elephant'; and to Oxford, the University was in propitiously recep- 'Beaks, or Heads' of various specimens, amongst tive mood. Ancient academic mistrust of empirical which are six referenced to Markgraf's Htstona studies had begun to subside during the second half Naturahs Brasduu (1648). of the seventeenth century, and the study of 'philo- Brazilian specimens are again prominent among sophical history' formally entered the curriculum. As the four-footed beasts, with others from Greenland, part of his 'Propositions' submitted to the University Cape Verde, India and Arabia; several undoubted with a view to founding the Museum, Ashmole African specimens are also present. A number of nominated Dr Robert Plot to be the Reader in this heads, skins and other body parts are listed in subject and held out the prospect that he would in addition to (presumably) whole specimens, as well time endow the chair; although the endowment was as 'Divers Horns answering to those, by Authors never forthcoming, Plot was appointed the first attributed to the Ibex, Gazella, Hippelaphus, Trage- keeper of the Ashmolean in a move that underlined laphus, Cervus palmatum, Camelopardis, &c.'8 the integral role within the University curriculum Two pages of 'Fishes and their parts' include that the Museum was expected to play. fragments of sea-horses, dolphins, whales, narwhal It was as a resource for exploitation in researches (Unuomu martnum) and walrus, as well as true fishes of this kind that the Tradescant collection recom- of the more sought-after varieties such as remora and mended itself to Ashmole and it was its usefulness in sun-fish. Five pages of 'Shell-creatures' follow, this respect that he stressed in the formal document

126 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 THE ASHMOLEAN AS A MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, 1683-1860 cabinets of the day. The other statute in question owed everything to the established conventions of would have had a particular relevance to the stuffed the Renaissance Kunstkammer collection and to the specimens: classical sources that in turn provided the conven- That as any particular growes old & perishing, the Keeper tional wisdom concerning their supposed properties. may remove it into one of the Qosets, or other repository; In this category may be counted a number of & some other to be substituted 14 specimens listed in the Book of the Dean of Christ This provision was one that certainly was resorted to Church, including minerals and fossil corals to which on more than one occasion. the classical canon applied a variety of conventional names and to which it attached a number of specific attributes. There were, for example, several omhrtae The early years of the Ashmolean in various shapes, some of them mounted in precious Downloaded from Within a year of the Ashmolean's opening Lhwyd metal, acknowledging their primarily amuletic inter- had completed the catalogue of over 600 shells est' these were held to originate in rain and thunder- (assigned to the Senior Proctor).15 The others fol- storms, and to be sovereign antidotes to poison. lowed over the space of the next decade or so, and Astcnac or astrottes were also present — their surfaces patterned with millefiori-like star-shaped elements -

once completed the texts of all six catalogues were http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ copied by a scrivenor into a single volume which was treasured for their efficacy as 'victory stones'. A to form a security copy in case of loss of the others, single specimen of swallow stone (Lapis cheltdomus), and which was placed in the care of the Vice- traditionally said to be found within the heads of Chancellor.16 swallow nestlings and prized as a means to Apart from the Senior Proctor's catalogue, only 'strengthen the brain', acknowledges another belief one other inventory of natural history specimens on which the curators must surely have had cause to survives today from the original series, namely that speculate and to begin to question the received assigned to the Dean of Christ Church and dealing tradition. at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 with minerals and gems (as well as man-made curi- Some evidence for this process can be found in the osities and paintings).17 From the Vice-Chancellor's descriptions of a number of fossil fish teeth. Of the consolidated copy of 1696-7 the texts of two more toad-stones (Lapis bufomtes, derived from the palatal 20 can be recovered, assigned respectively to the Pro- teeth of certain bony fishes ), for example, several fessor of Medicine (dealing with materia medica, are recorded as having been collected in the Oxford manne plants and gourds) and to the Principal of region, under circumstances which might have dis- Brasenose (zoological specimens);18 both are also couraged any suggestion of supernatural origins. known from amended copies drawn up in the mid Hence one group of fourteen of them, recovered eighteenth century (see below). from a quarry at Garford, Berkshire, are described as In addition, brief details of donations to the 'plate-like toad-stones or fish teeth', suggesting that Museum were recorded between 1683 and 1766 in their fossil origin was well appreciated, even if the a folio volume with vellum leaves titled the Book of traditional terminology was preserved. Similarly, a Benefactors.19 In some instances, whimsical sketches specimen described as a 'barbed fish-tooth or glosso- of donations illustrate the initial letters of the various petra\ found in a sand-pit at Sandford, Oxfordshire, entries, providing valuable glimpses of now-lost is clearly recognized for what it is (in fact deriving specimens. from the shark family), even though its long-out- dated name, owing more to myth than to science, is Minerals and fossils preserved. Perhaps more than any other category of material Plot and Lhwyd both occupied positions of schol- represented in the early collections, the minerals and arly authority at a period when the true nature of gems enshrine some of the most retrospective aspects fossils remained open to debate. Plot has been of the displays. Many of these specimens can be characterized as an adherent of the belief that all equated with items listed in the Tradescant catalogue fossils and minerals were sports of nature, produced of 1656, where their presence had nothing to do with within the earth by a 'plastic virtue or petrifying the 'new science' of the seventeenth century but fluid'; the formation of kidney-stones and gall-stones

129 ARTHUR MACGREGOR within the body provided an analogous mechanism.21 as arrowheads, knife- and sword-handles, necklaces, Seeking no direct biological counterparts for the crucifixes, intaglios and prepared spheres in various 'formed stones' he encountered, Plot had a tendency hardstones. In the case of the prehistoric stone to give equal weight to any formal resemblances artefacts, the Ashmolean curators played a part in between curiously shaped stones and organisms (or finally laying to rest the tradition that these were even objects) from the everyday world. Lhwyd's natural phenomena. In his Natural History of treatment of the fossil record was more penetrating, Staffordshire, Plot drew on ethnographic evidence although it remained embedded in an earlier system available to him in the Ashmolean to confirm that the of beliefs that explained true fossils as products of the stone axes whose status was still disputed were indeed spawn of marine animals, evaporated from the sea man-made objects: 'how they may be fastened to a and deposited in the rocks through the action of rain. helve', he wrote, 'may be seen in the Musaeum None the less, Lhwyd evidently vacillated in his Ashmoleanum where are several Indian ones of the Downloaded from beliefs, being 'at times almost convinced . . . that like kind'.23 Lhwyd, on the other hand, was to many of those vertebrae and shells . . . are the spoils encounter in the Scottish highlands the widely-held 22 of once living animals'. In the texts of the Ashmo- superstition that flint arrowheads were the agency by lean catalogues one can almost see this process of which 'elf-shot' cattle fell under the influence of enlightenment at work. witches and elves, and by reference to stone-tipped http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ Other essential ingredients of the well-stocked arrows from contemporary stone-using cultures in Kunstkammer can also be recognized. The aetttes or North America he was able to demonstrate conclu- eagle-stone, for example, is represented in the Ash- sively their man-made origin 24 These episodes illus- molean collection by one specimen, 'ash-grey in trate persuasively the contention that in the early colour and with another stone or a lump of clay Ashmolean 'man and nature were considered together inside it'. Once again the curators of the collection as two elements in a single system'.25 show themselves familiar with the commonplace

If the catalogue entries otherwise signal little at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 nature of these hollow geodes enclosing a loose advance in the composition of the collection from body within, while continuing to acknowledge — the Tradescants' day, the early operation of the perhaps out of no more than piety for the founder Museum is shown in a more positive light by a — the special significance formerly attributed to it. letter sent to Plot by Martin Lister (c.1638—1712) Some specimens were still prized for their per- in the founding year of 1683, from which there ceived resemblance to other natural objects: several emerges a rare illustration of the functioning of the items are termed Cats' Eyes (Oculus belli), including Ashmolean as an integrated institution (including the one 'obscured as if by a cataract', and six as Wolfs' ground-floor School of Natural History and base- Eyes (Lycophthalmi), for which Gessner is cited as ment chemical laboratory in addition to the museum authority. The same ability of nature to mimic display, housed on the upper floor), all under the appearances accounts for the presence of various control of Plot as the University's first professor of specimens of 'Florentine marble', polished speci- chemistry. Lister's letter accompanied a gift of shells mens showing simulacra of landscapes, churches, (see below), but in the following passage he refers to ruined cities, etc. Several examples too are recorded a number of mineral specimens which clearly were of Ludus Paracelsus or Ludus Helmontii - naturally destined for analysis in the laboratory rather than for formed cubes of mineral looking intnguingly like display: playing dice. Lhwyd (a Welshman), no doubt, was responsible for the observation in relation to 'Thirty- I pray add this to the rest of yo[ur] Obligations, if you two tesserae, of metallic colour', that 'Their shape is will get the Iron ores, (w* I have sent) or any w"* you have (w* may be done in a little quantity in Small natural and they are found in all the laminar stones of covered Crucibles) w* are not in my Collection Carefullie Wales'. calcined or Nealed, and the time noted, when they first e Yet further items are included in this section on begin to own y Loadstone. It will be for my Credit & our Country Man Gilberts, for on this, his Account of the account of their material although they had other Loadstone very much depends, and therefore he is very claims as curiosities: a series of archers' thumb- Cautious & particular in the manner of Calcination, he rings, for example, in chalcedony and agate, as well requires 12 Hours in die Calcination, but I have known

130 THE ASHMOLEAN AS A MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, 1683-1860 some take 24 Hours, before they would acknowledge the Uffenbach was conducted around the collection by Loadstone. Our Curator [at the Royal Society] now is so Lhwyd's successor, David Parry: very idle & conceited, y', altho' I sent up 17 ores ready prepared, yet I find they are yet prejudiced & believe I When Mr. Parry arrived he showed us the stones down in Imposed upon them, & those y do not, begin generally to the hall of the Ashmolean. They are in three very large low think that all mineral Bodies whatsoever will yeild to presses. There is a splendid quantity and variety of these [any] Loadstone after calcination but I doubt not if the stones, such as I have never in all my life seen together Experiment be Carefully tryed, they will find neither true, before It is unnecessary to describe them here; moreover it for I have purposely had some stones 5 days & as many would be impossible, as this has been very well done by the Nights in the fire, without gaining any thing upon them, collector himself, Mr. Lluyd in his iMhophylactum in because not Iron.26 octavo; as only 125 copies of this book were printed for some of his own friends, at a cost of one guinea, and none Lister's enthusiastic support for the founding of the of these are now available, Mr. Parry, who helped Mr.

27 Lluyd in his collating, is going to publish it again, and in a Downloaded from Ashmolean has been commented upon elsewhere, greatly augmented edition. I must say of the classification here he clearly reveals his ambition that the Museum (of the stones) that following the description in the book might emerge as a more effectual alternative to the they are faultlessly arranged according to class and species, Repository of the Royal Society.28 Although the and also so conveniently that the larger stones are to be laboratory was indeed to build an independent seen uncovered in the big drawers, the smaller ones in

round boxes according to size. Those placed thus together http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ reputation for itself, its activities throughout most are numbered, so that one can find them in the catalogue, of the eighteenth century relied very little on the and also that they might not get mixed up with each other, resources of the museum.29 as might happen if they were lying loose 33 Not unnaturally, given the continuing uncertainty The remainder of the mineral collection, on the main as to their origins, fossils (other than the familiar if (upper) floor of the Museum, also received more- imperfectly understood bodies mentioned above) 30 than-usual praise from the normally acerbic Uffen- played little part in the Tradescant collection. bach: More than any other element, however, the collec- at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 tions of fossils were expanded in a significant and In one corner stood a cabinet in which were many beautiful systematic manner during the early decades of the lapuies prettost, such as I have seldom seen in such profusion and in the centre were several fine lapuies Ashmolean's existence, due in part to gifts from florenttm; an uncommonly good glosso-petra, about seven Plot but more particularly to Lhwyd's work in the inches long and two wide at the back, a lovely light green field. A number of those listed in the Book of the stone, almost like jasper and various beautiful crystals also, Dean of Christ Church are provenanced to sources amongst them two pieces with moss imbedded in them. A splendid topaz, bigger than a walnut. An amethyst, as large in the Oxford area - Garford, Sandford, Witney, 34 again as the above, but faulty. Marcham, Faringdon - and one is referenced to Plot's Natural History of Oxford-shire?1 At the Lhwyd had also been instrumental, it seems, in conclusion of a dozen such entries is an interpola- attracting a collection of some fifty minerals and ore tion by Lhwyd to the effect that 'I found these specimens, gathered by the Swedish mineralogist stones . . . near my home, and also a number of Johan Angerstein (1672-1720) while on a tour of others of equal elegance. We placed all these with a south-west England and Wales in 1702-3. Lhwyd large number of others of the same kind which are supplied Angerstein with letters of introduction and stored separately . . .' no doubt the small but valuable collection was given The cabinets in which Lhwyd arranged his care- to him in gratitude from the Swede. Many of the fully classified specimens - including many of those entries are glossed with the German and Swedish described in his Ltthophylacii Britannia Ichnogra- terms for the ores concerned, most of which are phia31 (Fig. 4) - evidently were stored on the provenanced to the mines where they were collected: ground floor of the Museum (otherwise taken up the precision of the entries in this respect contrasts by the School of Natural History), or at least they with the difficulties posed by Angerstein's phonetic were so when the Museum received its well-docu- spellings of Cornish place-names in particular, mented visit from the earnest young German travel- although many of the mineral sources have now ler and diarist, Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, in been deciphered.35 1710, a year after Lhwyd's death. On that occasion, So prolific, indeed, was the influx of 'formed Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 Downloaded from http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 ARTHUR MACGREGOR of Natural History, held at the Naturalis Museum, 13 R F Ovenell, The Ashmolean Museum 1683-1894 (Oxford, Leiden, on IO-II May 2001. The theme of the 1986), pp 49-50 conference was 'Lost, stolen or strayed: the fate of 14 Ovenell, op at (note 13), p 50 missing natural history collections'. I am grateful to 15 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 7, MacGregor, op at (note 1), PP i25-5i my colleague Philip Powell for comments on the 16 Throughout the period in which the recently published section dealing with the fossil collections and to transcripts (MacGregor, op at (note 1)) were being prepared, Gina Douglas, Librarian at the Linnean Society, the Vice-Chancellor's security copy (AMS n) was missing from its shelf in the Ashmolean Library, it was rediscovered who introduced me to the Introduction to my own (having been mis-shelved in the reserve collection) too late for museum. it to be used in that publication, but it is planned to include it in a future volume Its constituent texts provide a more comprehensive account of the initial holdings than can be

recovered from the surviving originals, which are now incom- Downloaded from Notes and references plete, damaged and illegible m places, and extensively amended 1 Arthur MacGregor, with Melanie Mendonca and Julia White, AshmoUan Museum Manuscript Catalogues of the early Museum 17 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 8, 'Liber Dfli Decani jEdis Collections, 1683-1886 (Pan I) (Oxford, 2000), reviewed in Chnsti', MacGregor, op cit (note 1), pp 33-65 Two further Journal of the History of Collections 13 no. 1 (2001), pp 09-100 catalogues surviving from the earliest series deal respectively with antiquities and curiosities including ethnographic spea- 2 Ashmolean Museum, A Catalogue of the AshmoUan Museum, http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ Descriptive of the Zoological Specimens, Antiquities, Coins and mens (given to the Junior Proctor) and with coins and medals Miscellaneous Curiosities (Oxford, 1836) (assigned to the Vice-ChanceUor in his capaaty as a Visitor) See further ibid , pp 15—31, 67-123 3 Thomas Johnson, The Herball or Generall Historte of Plantes gathered by John Gerarde very much Enlarged and Amended 18 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 11, see note 16 by Thomas Johnson (London, 1633), passim, John Parkinson, 19 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 2, MacGregor, op. at (note 1), Parodist in Sole Paradtsus Tenestrts (London, 1629), passim PP 1-13 4 Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO), SP 16/4, 155- 20 Although commonly ldenufied as coming from the ray family, 6, quoted in full in Arthur MacGregor (ed ), Tradescant 's my colleague Philip Powell observes that toad stones pnn- Rarities Essays on the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum, apally derive from the Jurassic semionoud Lepidoter, certain 1683, with a catalogue of the surviving early collections (Oxford, smaller examples (e g Edward Lhwyd, Lithophylacn Britannia at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 1983), PP 19-20 Ichnographia (Oxford, 1699), no 1395) may derive from pyenodonts 5 John Ray, The Ornithology of Francis Willughby (London, 1678), pp 154, 193-4. 21 Hugh Torrens, 'Early collecting in the field of geology', in O Impey and A MacGregor (eds ), The Origins of Museums 6 John Tradescant, Musteum Tradescantianum or, a collection of the cabinet of curiosities in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century rantus preserved at South-Lambeth neer London (London, Europe (Oxford, 1985), p 209 It comes as no surprise, 1656) therefore, to find seveml examples of stones recovered from 7 The question of whether Birds of Paradise did or did not the internal organs of men and animals (and even fish) in the possess legs (many prepared sluns having had them removed lists of mineral speamens held in the Ashmolean before export to the West) soil exercised collectors at this time 22 See M E Jahn, 'The Old Ashmolean Museum and the Lhwyd 8 Tradescant, op at (note 6), p 7 collections', Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of 9 Johnson, op at (note 3), p 1546 Natural History 4 (1966), pp 244-8, Ceal Schneer, 'The rise of historical geology in the seventeenth century', Isis 45 10 In a letter of 1625, however, the elder Tradescant had (1954), pp 260-61 J M Edmonds, in 'Comments on spea- expressed an interest in receiving 'all sorts of fruts mcru> catalogued by Lhwyd', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Dried As . tree Beanes Lital Red & Black In ther Cods Society 106 (1950), proceedings pp vi-vn, estimates Lhwyd's whithe what flower & seed Canbe gotten the flowers Layd collection at 1,778 speamens, and stresses that these initially Betwin paper leaves In a Book Dried' John Tradescant to did not form part of the Museum's property Edward Nicholas, PRO SP 16/4, 155-6, reproduced in full in MacGregor, op cit (note 4), pp 19-20. One hortus stccus in 23 Robert Plot, The Natural History of Staffordshire (Oxford, the Bodleian Library is tradiaonally assigned to the Trades- 1686), p 397 cants, but the only hand so far recognized in it is that of 24 'They are just the same chip'd Flints the Natives of New Ashmole (ibid , p. 356, no 444). England head their Arrows with at this Day', wrote Lhwyd, 11 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 594, p. 111, reproduced 'and there are also several Stone Hatchets found in this m full by M Welch in MacGregor, op at (note 4), pp. 53-5 Kingdom, not unlike those of the Americans' ('Extracts of For the transfer of the collection from Tradescant to Ashmole several letters from Mr Edward Lhwyd . . to Dr. Rich see ibid., also P Leith-Ross, The John Tradescanls, Gardeners to Richardson . communicated by Dr Hans Sloane', Philo- the Rose and Lily Queen (London, 1984, reprinted 1998) sophical Transactions of the Royal Society 28 no 337 (1713), pp 99-100. 12 Arthur MacGregor and Andiony Turner, 'The Ashmolean Museum', in L S Sutherland and L G Mitchell (eds ), The 25 MacGregor and Turner, op. at (note 12), p 642 History of the University of Oxford V The Eighteenth Century 26 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 19, 'Vin Qjanssimi] MJarunus] (Oxford, 1986), p 643 Lister M D Concha & Fossilia quae in Histona Ammalium

142 THE ASHMOLEAN AS A MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, 1683-1860

Anghcarum Descnbuntur', MacGregor, op cit (note 1), in the interim and are not completely identical to their PP 153-8, letter quoted on pp 153-4 seventeenth-century forerunners Three of them survive - 27 See MacGregor and Turner, op at (note 12), p 640, quoting AMS 10, The Book of the Regius Professor of Medicine Arthur Chiriett's assertion to Lister that 'it was your Letters, (matena medua, marine plants and gourds), AMS 12, The Gifts and offers that encouraged the then V[ice] Qhanccllor] Book of the Dean of Christ Church (minerals, gems, cunosines and B[isho]p Fell [then Dean of Christ Church] to undertake and paintings) and AMS 13, The Book of the Pnnapal of the erecting of that Noble building, so that to you is due our Brasenose (zoological specimens) see MacGregor, op at. Thanks for every thing belonging both to the Fabric, Con- (note 1), pp. 159-215 1 tentes and Uses thereof 46 'Donations from 1757 to 1769, 1824 to 1829', in MacGregor, 28 Plot and Lister were both Fellows of the Royal Society Plot op. at (note 1), pp 239-40 In contrast to the prestigious also founded a Philosophical Society in Oxford which corres- format of the earlier Book of Benefactors (op at, note 19), this ponded with the London-based Royal Society and with a record of donations is in notebook form similar society in Dublin, but which remained modest in its 47 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Ashmole 1822, fols 3-4, see

ambitions compared to the London body MacGregor and Turner, op at (note 12), p. 653 Downloaded from 29 A V Simcock, The AshmoUan Museum and Oxford Science 48 Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1822, fol 92 Elsewhere, da 1683-1983 (Oxford, 1984), pp 7-10 Costa encouraged Huddesford to republish Lhwyd's volume 30 In the Musttum Tradescantianum (op cit (note 6), pp 17-26) (Jahn, op at (note 22), p 245), in the matter of retrieving the the section tided 'Fossiha' includes, as well as a few true fossils collection from the chaos in which he had found it, Huddes- (ammonites, belemnites, denies vani petrtficati), a much greater ford wrote to Edward Wnght on 24 March 1759 'I have number of mineral specimens, linked only by their similarly succeeded therein beyond my expectation', while conceding http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ hiving been dug from the ground (fossata) that 'from want of proper partitions in the drawers, and by the carelessness of the under-keepers, many are ennrely lost' 31 Robert Plot, The Natural History of Oxfordshire (Oxford, (ibid.) 1677), pi vm fig 9 32 Lhwyd, op. at (note 20) 49 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 20 'Catalogue Borlase', Mac- Gregor, op cit (note i), pp 217—21 33 W H Qjiarrell and W J C Quarrell, Oxford m 1710, from the Travels of Zachanas Conrad von Uffenbach (Oxford, 1928), 50 Morrab Library, Penzance, MS OL rv, 311-12, OL vu 3, p 49, translated from Z C von Uffenbach, Merkmirdige LB in 364 Reisen dutch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland (Ulm, 51 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 4, fols 7-8 'Mr Pennant's Cata- '753-4), vol m, p 128 logue, 1759', MacGregor, op at (note 1), p 224. at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016 34 Quarrell and Quarrell, op at (note 33), pp 27-8 52 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 1, inscribed '1765 November the 35 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 4, fols 9-10, MacGregor, op at 22d I presented the following Collection of Fossils to the (note 1), pp 225—7 Ashmolean Museum Oxon Joshua Plan Aged 67', MacGre- gor, op at. (note 1), pp 229-38 36 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 26 no 314 (1708), pp 77-8 For earlier mention of this scheme see letters 53 The heaviest casualties seem to have been suffered by the from Lhwyd to Lister dated 1691 and 1698 respectively, birds, where only sixty-three of the original 105 entries reproduced in Jahn, op at. (note 22), p 246 Although the received new numbers and only twelve additions are recorded boundaries between them must have been blurred in the from other sources in the meantime The exercise of compar- extreme, these specimens may have been seen as forming ison is not straightforward, however, and precise quantification part of Lhwyd's private collection rather than that of the is difficult Ashmolean 54 R F Ovenell, 'The Tradescant dodo', Archives of Natural 37 For Woodward's existing collection at Cambridge, see David History 19 (2) (1992), pp 145-52. Lustratw, Ovenell points Price, 'John Woodward and a surviving British geological out, is used synonymously with the word msttatio - visitation — collection from the early eighteenth century', Journal of the in the Ashmolean statutes, and carries no allusion to the History of Collections 1 (1989), pp 79—95 purifying fire of classical ritual The present-day Visitors, 38 Op at. (note 15) when they undertake an inspection of the Museum's galleries, are said to perlustrate, where ordinary mortals might be 39 Simcock, op at (note 29), p 9 and note 83 content to perambulate 40 See Leith-Ross, op at (note n), pp 97-8 55 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Ashmole 1822, fol 126 41 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 2, fol 121-; MacGregor, op at 56 Morrab Library, Penzancc, OL VII, 311-12 By this time (note 1), p. 7 Huddesford would have had a model for this sort of approach 42 See Arthur MacGregor, 'Mary Davis's horn a vanished curi- in the form of Daniel Solander, a pupil of Linnaeus himself, osity', The Ashmolean no 3 (1983), pp 10-11 The phenom- employed at the British Museum from 1763 on the compilation enon of'horns' growing on human subjects is expertly analysed of a catalogue of the natural history specimens arranged on in Jan Bondeson, The Two-headed Boy and other Medical Linnaean pnnaples Marvels (Cornell, 2000), pp 120-40. 57 Simcock, op at (note 29), p 9 43 For this era see MacGregor and Turner, op at (note 12), pp 647-33; Ovcnell, op. at (note 13), pp 108-44 58 This illustration is discussed at length by J M Edmonds and J A Doughs,'William BuckUnd, F R. S. (1784-1856)3^ an 44 Richard Gough, British Topography (London, 1780), vol n, Oxford geological lecture, 1823', Notes and Records of the Royal p. 134. Society 30 (1976), pp 141-67, the authors provide identities 45 These later texts take some account of changes to the collection for all the figures represented in the audience

143 ARTHUR MACGREGOR

59 R- T Gunther (Early Science in Oxford (Oxford, 1923-67), 67 Ovenell, op at (note 13), p 205 vol 1, p 205; vol m, pp. 240-1, 244, 233 ff) states that these overflow premises became known for a time as the Clarendon 68 MacGregor and Headon, op at (note 60), p 382 and passim Saence Museum, Ovenell too (op at (note 13), p. 213) makes 69 Op at (note 66) reference to the 'Clarendon Geological Museum' These assertions are denied by Simcodt (op at (note 29), p 13 70 Ovenell, op at. (note 13), p 212 and note 131) 71 In a report to the Visitors of the Ashmolean, dated 1833 and 60 Arthur MacGrtgor and Abigail Headon, 'Re-mvennng the titled 'Proposed arrangement of the Ashmolean Museum' Ashmolean natural history and natural theology at Oxford in (Ashmolean Museum, AMS 44 [10]), Philip Duncan made the 1820s to 1850s', Archives of Natural History 27 (3) (2000), his attitude on this matter abundantly clear 'The most import- PP 369-406 ant point in rearranging the Museum is the total separation of 61 P B Duncan, m Ashmolean Museum, op at (note 2), p vi works of art from those of nature Artificial productions not 62 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 42. only distract the attention from the consideration of natural

objects by interfering with & concealing them, but are Downloaded from 63 Ashmolean Museum, AMS 24. themselves of very secondary importance in a Museum 64 William Paley, Natural Theology or evidences of the existence wh[ich] aims at the advancement of saence ' and attributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of nature (London, 1802) 72 One potential acquisition that evaded the Museum was the large ornithological collection that had been formed by Strick- 65 MacGregor and Headon, op cit (note 60), pp 375-81 land — said (Dictionary of National Biography) to have con-

66 Ashmolean Museum, op at (note 2) A less well-known fifty- sisted of some 6,000 but! skins — and which he bequeathed to http://jhc.oxfordjournals.org/ one-page Introduction to the Catalogue of the Ashmolean the Ashmolean Strickland's pnnapal executor was his influ- Museum, also exists, prepared a decade earlier under the ential father-in-law, Sir William Jardine (1800-74), whose keepership of John Duncan Although a small number of zealous guardianship of his son-in-law's interests and his printed copies survives, its bibliographical obscurity suggests insistence on numerous conditions to the bequest eventually that it may never have been formally published see MacGre- led to its withdrawal For Strickland see Sir William Jardine, gor and Headon, op at (note 60), p 381 The locations of Memoirs of H E Strickland (London, 1858) three further copies have been estabhshed since the publication of that article 73 Ovenell, op at (note 13), p 213 at Universidade de S�o Paulo on March 24, 2016

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