Museums of Natural History 183 



History of Museum Preparation 



The preservation of animals so that they can be displayed 

 indefinitely is not a recent idea. A review of the history of 

 museum exhibition portrays the gradual evolution of methods 

 and results over the past several hundred years, from a crude 

 beginning of "stuffed" specimens to the present magnificent 

 works of art in great halls of famous museums. 



It is interesting to investigate the origin of the early attempts 

 at animal preservation. There are, of course, many examples of 

 the cave man's crude use of animal skins; he formed them over 

 mud and rocks to imitate live animals for ritual purposes. For 

 the same reason the Egyptians, who pioneered the art of em- 

 balming, preserved animals in their entirety. One may search 

 further and note that in Peru there is recorded the use of pre- 

 served bird skins for ornamental purposes as early as a.d. 1200. 

 The Spanish conqueror of Mexico, Cortez, informs us that 

 Montezuma, whom he dethroned, possessed robes covered with 

 the skins of trogons and other birds of brilliant plumage. Unfor- 

 tunately, history records these facts only because they are asso- 

 ciated with the outstanding figures of the times. However, it 

 may be safely assumed that there must have been "stuffed birds" 

 in existence during a period when work with bird skins was so 

 popular. Five centuries before Christ, Hanno, the Carthaginian 

 navigator, collected gorilla skins which were preserved for 

 generations. Actually, as far as it can be ascertained, this is 

 the earliest recorded attempt to preserve an animal skin for a 

 purpose other than ritual. One of the earliest recorded ex- 

 amples of an entire mammal mounted for museum exhibition 

 occurred in Italy. A rhinoceros was "stuffed" for the museum 

 of Ulysses Aldrovandus in Bologna in the sixteenth century. 

 Later it was transferred to the Royal Museum of Vertebrates in 

 Florence. 



This is not the place for an extended thesis on the evolution 

 of museum preparation and exhibition, but I have pursued the 

 subject fully and followed the recorded word of improvements 



