Enlightenment (Room 1)
The Natural World
In the eighteenth century, the collections in the British Museum
were divided into ‘Natural and Artificial Rarities’ – objects found
in nature or made by people. Only a few rooms had man-made objects
but case after case was filled with natural specimens. They
included Sloane’s herbarium – albums of plants from around the
world, all catalogued with a string of Latin names by his friend,
the botanist John Ray.
In 1735, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus revolutionised the
way plants, animals and other objects from the natural world were
named and classified by devising a much simpler binomial (two-name)
system. His pupil, Daniel Solander, was a curator in the Museum and
applied the system to Sloane’s birds, animals, shells, minerals and
fossils. In 1768, he travelled with the wealthy young gentleman
Joseph Banks on Captain James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific
and helped to catalogue the exotic collections they gathered
there.
Many of these original specimens are included in the exhibition,
as well as a number of fossils. They include one of the first
dinosaurs ever found – an Ichthyosaur, discovered by Mary Anning at
Lyme Regis in 1821. By 1880 there were so many natural history
specimens that they needed a museum of their own – the Natural
History Museum in South Kensington.
more information about this object