Zoology, 



A Chronological Account of the Principal Accessions 

 to the Collection of Mammals up to 1904. 



Owing to the earlier naturalists having had no appreciation 

 of the value of particulars about specimens, and the conse- 

 quent absence of records or registers, it is impossible to give 

 anything like a detailed account of the accessions to the Mammal 

 collection of the British Museum before 1837. In that year Dr. 

 J. E. Gray began the first register of accessions, in the form of a 

 small square octavo volume, replaced in 1838 by a large folio 

 register arranged on exactly the same plan as at present, so that 

 from 1838 to the present time there is a continuous and uniform 

 record of accessions. The method of numeration in this series of 

 registers, invented by Dr. Gray, is such that every register 

 number shows, without further inquiry, the exact date of 

 in coloration of the specimen it refers to. 



Before 1837. 



The first specimens received would have been those in the 

 original collection of Sir Hans Sloane, purchased by the nation 

 under his will of 1753, and thus forming the nucleus of the 

 National Museum. Unfortunately no detailed list of the Natural 

 History collections is available, and only some few isolated speci- 

 mens can be identified as having belonged to it. Of these mention 

 may be made of the record pair of horns of the Indian Buffalo 

 (Bubalus bubalis), 14 feet from tip to tip, round the curves, said 

 to have been given to Sir Hans Sloane in lieu of doctor's fee by 

 a barber in East London, and of a horn, 33 inches in length, of 

 Burchell's Rhinoceros (Diccros simus). 



But even older than these are the few specimens that can be 

 identified as from the original Royal Society's collection, described 

 in 1681 in Grew's " Catalogue of the. . . Rarities belonging to the 

 Royal Society, and preserved at Gresham College," and transferred 

 to the British Museum in 1781. Of these the most notable is the 

 frontlet of the West African Dwarf Buffalo, described by Grew 

 in 1681, and figured by Pennant in 1781 (Quadr. I., pi. II., 

 Fig. HI.)) tnis bem g' therefore, the type of Bos nanus, Boddaert, 

 and of Bos pumilus, Turton. 



As the identification of other objects from the Royal 



