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Description: | Collections are 1.5M specimens covering natural history and geology and mainly of East Anglian, but also Britain, Europe and the rest of the world. Foreign material was given to Liverpool and Coventry Museums after the war, and part collections bought by the British Museum (Natural History) when they were actively seeking to acquire type material. Notable transfers of the latter sort include the Gurney birds of prey and Edwards' type series of homopteran bugs.
Bird collections include some fine Victorian taxidermy by Gunn and other local taxidermists and have several historically important specimens, including first records for Britain of Bufflehead, South Polar Skua and Tropicbird. Cased specimens include work by T.E.Gunn, F.E.Gunn, J.A.Cole, W.Lowne, H.N.Pashley, B.Leadbeater, E.C.Saunders and J.E.Knights, and is remarkable in containing examples of work of all the major East Anglian taxidermists from 1790 to the present. day. Collectors include J.H.Gurney, J.H.Gurney Jnr., B.B.Riviere and E.C.Arnold. The most important specimen is the Great Auk, acquired in 1873, and a unique group of British Great Bustards. The bird skins constitute an important British and European collection including historically important specimens. Egg collection is extensive of both British and foreign material numbering some 10,000 specimens. These eggs are an important historical resource for those scientists studying bird biology.
The mammals include several important mounted specimens from Australia (mid 19th century) and Africa. Notable among these is a group of antelope, including Nile Lechwe. There is a comprehensive collection of East Anglian mammals (skins and mounts) and osteology collections are important as reference material for work on Pleistocene mammal remains.
Reptiles and amphibians not well-represented with only 130 specimens. The 300 fish specimens are mainly of local origin, and include several important items from the Yarmouth naturalist A.H.Patterson.
The entomology collections include the pre-eminent Fountaine-Neimy collection of butterflies resulted from a life-time's collecting by Margaret Fountaine and her companion Khalil Neimy from 1892 to 1940 breeding and collecting specimens containing 22,000 butterflies. There are five types in the collection. Margaret Fountaine painted the caterpillars of the butterflies she reared, (her sketch-books are in the Entomology Library of the Natural History Museum Also 12 journals detailing her life from 1878 to her death in 1940. Also the J.B.Bridgman collection of British Hymenoptera containing 9819 specimens, including 336 types. Of these, 316 are parasitic ichneumon wasps and are internationally important. Apart from these, the collections of J.Edwards (British Coleoptera and Hemiptera), E.C.Bedwell (British and foreign Coleoptera and Hemiptera) and W.G.Whittingham (British Lepidoptera) are nationally important, including many first records for Britain. There are a further 26 large collections covering all orders, including 56,000 British and 30,000 foreign Lepidoptera, and 30,000 British Diptera. Included in these other collections are 41 type specimens.
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The geology collection is in storage at the present time, some of them internationally important, but are largely fossils from the Chalk, Crag and Quaternary deposits
Highlights of the geology collection include bones, antlers and tusks from large vertebrates of the Cromer Forest-bed Formation which outcrops around the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk. The largest and most complete fossil elephant ever found is the West Runton elephant, which is currently housed in special storage at the Roots of Norfolk, Gressenhall. The lower jaw is displayed in the Norwich Castle and a small exhibition about the find at will be found Cromer Museum, when it re-opens in 2006 after refurbishment.
The Mineral collection of almost 3,500 specimens spans a period of acquisition from the 1820s to the 1980s and includes material from the British Isles, Europe, Australia, South America, Africa, North Ameria, Greenland, Siberia, Far East, Indian subcontinent, Middle East and Oceania. Whilst many of the field collection details are vague by modern standards (old collections often are) there are many fine and rare specimens. Some of these are on display in the Fitch Room at the Norwich Castle and in a small temporary display off the Foreign Mammals Gallery.
The fossils of the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery are in the process of being entered to the electronic database. A list of taxa and localities that have been entered to date are online. | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | +44 (0)1603 493623 | Telephone: | +44 (0)1603 493625 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:6624 | Go to resource |
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