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Macleay’s Choice: Transacting the Natural History Trade in the Nineteenth Century

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Abstract

Much of our knowledge about the nineteenth-century natural history boom resides with the collectors themselves and their collections. We know much less about the conduct of the global trade that made collecting possible. That such a trade occurred in the face of significant obstacles of distance, variable prices, inadequate information, and diverse agents makes our knowledge deficit the more significant. William John Macleay, based in Sydney, built his significant natural history collection by trading locally as well as across the globe. Our study of Macleay measures his complete set of trading transactions at a time of rapid expansion of his collection. It analyses how he chose between different forms of exchange and agreed fair value in order to complete long-distance specimen trading.

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  • 17 August 2020

    During the publication process of above mentioned article the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Notes</Emphasis> to Figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 were erroneously deleted from the figure legends. The correct versions are given below.

Notes

  1. These estimates of name-bearing types are based on the work of Hahn (1962) and Peter Stanbury’s publications of Macleay types in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales (1969–1970), Ponder and Stanbury (1972), Whitely and Stanbury (1976), and Britton and Stanbury (1982). In the 1980s, most Macleay Museum Australian type specimens were placed on permanent loan with the Australian National Insect Collection and the Australian Museum.

  2. William J. Macleay, The Diaries of William John Macleay (1874–1881), Mitchell Library (ML) MSS 2009, 155 item 3; hereafter cited as: WMD with the date of the entry.

  3. For more on the parliamentary investigation into Krefft, see Rutledge and Whitley (1974).

  4. It is estimated that around 45,000 specimens came from the museum store built on the grounds of the family home of Elizabeth Bay House, along with the 200,000 or so entomological specimens. Of these, around half are estimated to be the collections of Alexander and his son William Sharp. In the twentieth century, the collections increased through sporadic donations and field collections, and today the museum holds 70,000 zoological specimens and 320,000 insects.

  5. A selection can be found at https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/creator/52070#/sections.

  6. For example, in early 1875, Macleay went to inspect some Samoan birds that were “the property of the Revd Mr Brown which are in Palmer’s keeping” (WMD, 8 March 1875).

  7. Throughout 1876, Beaumont, a carpenter, was contracted to build Macleay a new museum. It ended up costing £1200. No photographs of the museum have been found, but it is known that it was where much of the taxidermy work was carried out and where visiting researchers, such as Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay (1846–1888), William Aitcheson Haswell (1854–1925), and Robert J. Lendlmayer von Lendenfeld (1858–1913), worked on specimens.

  8. Agents included Corbett, Hamsom and Gibson, and Mrs. Forde.

  9. WMD, inward exchanges on 2 July 1874; 6 October 1874; 11 October 1875. Outward exchanges on 22 July 1874; 31 July 1874; 12 February 1875; 9 February 1876; 31 May 1876.

  10. WMD, inward and outward exchange on 11 December 1879 and 29 January 1881, respectively.

  11. See the Constructing Scientific Communities project, Citizen Science in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries. https://conscicom.org/. Accessed 14 October 2019.

  12. WMD 23 June 1874. He also refers to his “4/ contract” with Palmer’s on 13 August in that year.

  13. WMD, Gruber: 21 October 1874, 12 February 1875, 11 October 1875, 8 March 1876. Thorpe: 3 February 1876. Waller: 9 June 1876. Boucard: 16 November 1874, 15 January 1876.

  14. For example, to Professor Ralph Tate in Adelaide and the government Fisheries Commission (WMD 6 June 1879, 19 January 1880).

  15. Evidence found in the archives of the Australian Museum, correspondence C.10.79.15, December 1879.

  16. In his history of Australian entomology, Anthony Musgrave described the years from 1862 to 1929 as “the Macleayan period” characterised by the emphasis on taxonomy (Musgrave 1929–1931, p. 199).

  17. In 2015 the Macleay Museum closed prior to moving to the University’s new Chau Chak Wing Museum in 2020.

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Acknowledgements

This paper forms part of the project "Reconstructing museum specimen data through the pathways of global commerce" funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant scheme, Grant No. LP160101761.

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The original version of this article was revised: During the publication process of above mentioned article the Notes to figures 1 – 4 were erroneously deleted from the figure legends. The correct versions can be found in the Correction, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-020-09613-6.

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Ville, S., Wright, C. & Philp, J. Macleay’s Choice: Transacting the Natural History Trade in the Nineteenth Century. J Hist Biol 53, 345–375 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-020-09610-9

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