Rare and Curious Specimens, an Illustrated

Krefft's successor, Edward Pierson Ramsay (1842-1916), was the first Australian to head the Museum. Son of a prosperous medical practitioner whose assets included the Dobroyd Estate, he grew up in Sydney and, at the age of twenty-one, entered the University of Sydney, itself only twelve years old, with a single faculty and but three professors. He departed two years later without having taken a degree and, at the age of twenty-five established a successful plant and seed nursery on a portion of the Dobroyd Estate inherited from his father. Seven years later, in 1874, he was appointed curator of the Australian Museum. While it is conceivable that such a background might have fitted a native son for a junior position in the Herbarium, it would seem hardly to have provided ade quate preparation for the senior position in an institution devoted to zoology, geology and anthropology and with some international standing for researches in these fields. One must look further for justification of the trustees' faith. As a youth, his keen interest in natural history was cultivated in discussions with Pittard, Sir William Denison, and a German schoolteacher-naturalist, Reitmann. At twenty he became treasurer of the Entomological Society of New South Wales and three years later was elected a Life Fellow of the newly reconstituted Royal Society of New South Wales-an honour which may have more reflected the magnitude of his subscription than his scientific reputation which, at that stage, rested on eight short and rather pedestrian papers on Australian birds. This output might not have justified fellowship of a scientific society but it was a creditable achievement for an undergraduate. His youth and lack of formal training in science were no barrier to the acceptance of his papers in Ibis or Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London and by 1874 he was author of several dozen papers and had described eight new bird species. In that year he was also active in the group, led by W. J. Macleay, which established the Linnean Society of New South Wales. Krefft regarded him as a sycophant of Macleay and-since he had eaten Queensland lung-fish without recognising that these were 'living fossils' -as an incompetent naturalist. In April 1874, Krefft's only scientific assistant, George Masters, had resigned after ten years' service to take a better paid position with Macleay as curator of his extensive private collection (later to become the Macleay Museum in the University of Sydney). It was one of Krefft's many complaints against the trustees that Masters had, in fact, been working a great deal for Macleay while drawing his Museum salary and it seems that he played an active, if not public, part in the Krefft imbroglio. CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF TRUSTEES A. W. Scott 1874-79 C. Rolleslon 1880 A. Stephen 1881-89 }. C. Cox 1890 PRESIDENT, BOARD OF TRUSTEES }. C. Cox 1891-1912 CUSTODIANS E. P. Ramsay Curator 1874-94 C. Robinson Acting Secretary 1874-6, 1878 E. W. Palmer Acting Secretary 1877 ' C. R. Buck/and Secretary 1879 -82 0 R. Strahan S. Sine/air Secretary 1882-1917 37 0 At the height of the Krefft controversy, Ramsay applied for the vacant position of assistant curator but his application was not considered until the day after Krefft was ejected from the Museum when a special meeting was held and, on Macleay's motion, Ramsay was appointed curator. Macleay had good reason to be satisfied with his dealings with the Museum in the year 1874-5, having seen the demise of his bete noire, Krefft, the removal of one protege to his own service, and the establish ment of another at the head of the institution. At the inaugural meeting of the Linnean Society in January 1875, with Macleay in the chair as first president, council member Ramsay delivered a short paper on a new species of Honeyeater, which he named Ptilotis macleay ana. To imply that Ramsay obtained his position by patronage is not necessarily to deny his suitability: patronage was a normal and respectable procedure and nepotism only slightly less so. Aged thirty-two, with a budding reputation as an ornithologist, active in local biological circles, and moving at least ?n the fringes of the colonial establishment, he was an appropriate appointee- and much safer than the volatile foreigner, Krefft. Ramsay brought great energy to his scientific duties. Although his interests remained predominantly ornithological, he described a number of fish species and several new mammals, including the interesting Musky Rat-kangaroo. He was assidu ous in establishing exchange programmes with other institutions and, under his direc tion, the collections expanded considerably: it was a matter of considerable satisfaction Edward Pierson Ramsay, curator 1874-94. J ohn Brazier, fi rst cataloguer in a to him that, during his tenure, some 18 000 bird skins were added to the collection. zoological section of the Museum. Tardiness in the prod uction of desired His attitude to display, however, was extremely conservative and he tended to regard cata logues led to his dismissal during beautiful cabinets as more important than informative labels. the fi nancia l crisis of 1893. In the forty-second year of her reign and twenty-seven years after her beloved Prince Consort had organised the Great Exhibition in London's Crystal Palace, Queen Victoria commanded a commission of twenty-four members, including Ramsay, to do likewise in her colony of New South Wales: Whereas it is deemed advisable to hold an International Exhibition of Works of Industry and Art in Sydney, in the month of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy nine; know ye that we, relying on your loyalty, integrity, learning, and ability, have constituted and appointed, and by these presents do constitute and appoint, you to be Commissioners to take measures for the holding of such International Exhibition. 1 On the Sydney Domain, her dutiful commissioners built a cross-shaped Garden Palace, two storeys high 240 metres from north to south and 150 metres along the other axis, and occupying an area between the present Conservatorium and Parlia ment House. Eight hundred men, consulting 417 plans and utilising 1.5 million super ficial metres of timber, 2.5 million bricks, and 220 tonnes of corrugated iron, • constructed the building in eight months, working often under the new electric light. Together with its annexes, it covered a space about half that of London's 1851 Exhi bition. Among the many displays in the Garden Palace was an Ethnological Court where the habits, dresses, ornaments, weapons, canoes and paddles, implements for fishing and the chase and the rude pottery of the various Australian Colonies and the natives Felix Ra tte, first head of the M useum 's Thom as Whitelegge, in charge of marine of the several groups of Polynesia were illustrated by a collection of samples which, for Department of Mineralogy. invertebra tes, 1835- 1908. variety and extent as relating to the races named, has, in every probability, never been got together before ... The Court would not have been anything else so complete as it proved but for the 38 circumstances that the Trustees of the Australian Museum of Sydney lent their very would also have gone to the daughter institution which might then have developed comprehensive ethnological collection, usually displayed in that institution as part of its into a 'Museum of Man', bridging the arbitrary division that traditionally separates permanent treasures ... it will be almost impossible to get such a large collection together the study of pre-industrial from industrial cultures. again and we are led to this conclusion. by the rapid disappearance of th7 Australian Aborigines from the face of the earth, wh1le other savage people represented m the Court The rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne was no less manifest in the 1880s are suffering from a like decadence in ever increasing ratio . : . The Aborigine seems in than at present: Sydney's exhibition was followed two years later by one in the capable of the improvement of other native races ... he appears to have few aspirations southern capital, New South Wales appointing seventy-two commissioners (three times beyond satisfying the necessities of nature and indulgence, when near European settle the number that had been found necessary for its own exhibition) to show the flag ments in acquired but questionable tastes ... They are represented in New South Wales and Victoria by struggling remnants of once powerful tribes who are too often so debased in Victoria. Five trustees and Ramsay were included in the team, the Australi an and degraded as scarcely to deserve recognition as remains even of a savage race. 2 Museum contributing The exhibition closed in April 1880 but the Museum's ethnological and tech a case containing stuffed specimens of the food-fish es caught in Port Jackson and New nological collections remained in the Garden Palace until the night of 22 September South Wales waters .. There were also three hundred specimens of fi sh preserved in 1882 when the building and its contents were utterly destroyed by fire. Other import spirits, with photographs taken from the finest living specimens. Some handsome stuffed ant collections lost in the fire were W. B. Clarke's collection of minerals, field notes Australian paradise birds, lyre birds, bower birds, thrushes, etc., were also exhibited by 5 and maps, the Linnean Society's library, equipment and specimens (largely donated the Curator of the Australian Museum. by William John Macleay); and the records of the census of 1881. Judged by the minutes of their meetings, the trustees reacted to this catastrophe The emphasis on fishes reflected one of Ramsay's current interests.

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