Page 198 - The Secret Museum

aristocrats created the cabinets as a sign of their good taste, and as an obvious

display of the reach of their power.

Across Europe, many museum collections began life as the private collections of
wealthy individuals. In England, the British Museum was founded with books
belonging to George II and a variety of books, prints, drawings, medals, coins and
other treasures belonging to Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753), the Irish physician who
introduced hot chocolate into England from Jamaica – you can still buy the
chocolates named after him in the British Museum shop. Later, the natural history part
of his collection became the foundation for the Natural History Museum.

The great auk egg became a must-have curiosity because of its beautiful patterns;

any serious collector wanted an egg, or more than one if they could find them, and
they changed hands for vast amounts of money. Captain Vivian Hewitt, the first
person to fly across the Irish Sea, once owned 13 eggs, the most anyone has ever
owned. He liked creatures that can fly, set up a bird sanctuary on Anglesey and at one
time travelled with a pet parrot.

Robert Champley, an oologist, or egg collector (from the Greek for ‘egg’), from
Scarborough, was a keen collector and had nine by the late 1800s. This particular
egg was one of them. Champley found it in the Museum of Anatomy in Pavia, Italy. It

was covered in dirt and pushed into a wooden cup so it looked like an acorn. He
bought it for five Napoleons (the old name for lire), which was probably less than it
was worth at the time: ‘I borrowed the amount from my Russian friend, and, after
packing the egg carefully, left the museum, they seeming sorry that they had no more
specimens and considered that they had got a good bargain … I had a box made for
the egg the next day. The egg is perfect and thickly pencilled at the thick end.’

Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–99), an Italian priest, had donated the egg to the
University of Pavia. As a priest, he had ample leisure time and used it to work out

why things that interested him occurred. He began the study of echolocation in bats,
described animal reproduction, was the first to perform IVF (with frogs) and showed
that newts can regenerate parts of their body if injured. He also worked out why
stones skip on water when you skim them. His greatest work was on digestion,
showing that gastric juices in the stomach do a lot of the work. He died of a bladder
infection and asked that the bladder be put on public display in the Museum of
Natural History at the University of Pavia.

The great auk was a brilliant bird. They were 75–85 centimetres tall and, like

humans, stood upright on two feet. They were one of very few flightless birds that
were native to the northern hemisphere in recent times. There were others, like the
spectacled cormorant, which was bad at flying and reluctant to do so; the Syrian
ostrich, which couldn’t fly at all; and several flightless rails and grebes, all of which
are now extinct. Now, the only flightless birds in the northern hemisphere are the
North African ostrich and the Okinawa, Guam and Zapata rails.

Great auks had black wings, a white tummy and a white head and went by many