Epiloguematerials in the world, both in terms of size and rarities. With the publication of Systema
Naturae (1735), Linnaeus introduced a new system for classifying the natural world.
Initially an eleven-page pamphlet, the work was expanded by Linnaeus over many
years. By the time the tenth edition was published in 1758 it had become a substantial
two-volume set. The Linnaean Collection at the museum comprises approximately
12,000 items, with publication dates spanning over 300 years.
The Joseph Banks Collection is officially designated as historic by the museum’s
trustees with 4000 specimens of insects, including beetles, butterflies and moths, and
material collected by Banks and Solander during their circumnavigation of the globe
on the Endeavour. The Joseph Banks herbarium was originally left to the Linnean
Society, but was given to the British Museum by the society in 1863 and subsequently
transferred to the Natural History Museum after it first opened in 1881. At that time his
statue stood beside a door in an upper gallery that led into the herbarium. Its massive
wooden cabinets contain the dried plants brought back by the Endeavour in 1771 and
in the adjoining library are huge gilded morocco and calf portfolios containing some
of the superb paintings and etchings of the plants collected in Australia which are now
part of the historic Banks’ Florilegium published by the museum in the 1980s.
In 2006 the Natural History Museum acquired the largest collection of works by
and about Charles Darwin in existence. The collection comprises 1628 works written
by Darwin, including 477 versions of On the Origin of Species with many in different
languages. Although Darwin did not have a formal connection to the museum, his
work underpins all modern research in evolutionary biology which is a major area
of study for scientists there. After Darwin died the nation honoured the founder of
evolutionary theory by putting his marble statue on the landing of the Natural History
Museum – his rival Richard Owen’s own cathedral. Owen had waged a long and nasty
battle against the Darwinian revolution and had to live with this slight until his own
death in 1892. This struggle continued when in 1927 some lingering Owen loyalists
managed to get Darwin moved out and Owen moved in. Eighty years later, in May
2009, during the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the
publication of On the Origin of Species, the museum plucked Robert Owen off his
pedestal and put Charles Darwin back in his former place on the landing in the main
hall of the museum.
The Natural History Museum holds the Wallace Collection of memorabilia
including letters, notebooks, documents, and twenty-eight drawers of insects and other
specimens that he collected in his expeditions to Brazil, Borneo and the Indonesian
archipelago. Sometimes described as ‘the most famous scientist that you have never
heard of’, Wallace’s contribution to the formulation of the theory of evolution seemed
to have been almost forgotten by the Natural History Museum, but thanks to the efforts
of Bill Bailey, a fervent admirer, Wallace’s portrait which for years had been kept in a
storeroom there now hangs in the Central Hall above the statue of the seated Charles
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