A cornucopia of specimens

Courtesy of the University Museum of Zoology Cambridge.

Darwin’s specimens have come to rest in many different places: there are crabs in the University Museum of Natural History at Oxford, mockingbirds and finches in the Natural History Museum at Tring in Hertfordshire, and beetles, barnacles, spiders and fossils in the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. In Cambridge, there are Beagle minerals and more fossils in the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Beagle plants in the University Herbarium, and Beagle beetles and fish in the University Museum of Zoology. The University Museum of Zoology also has Darwin’s later important collection of barnacle specimens, mounted on microscope slides. Among the letters in the Darwin Archive there are still some specimens sent to him by correspondents, including flowers, fruits, seeds, and even some bees from New Zealand.