Tag Archives for National Museum Wales

Dropping a Pin on the Salter Collection

Written by George Seddon-Roberts, PhD Student, John Innes Centre, work completed whilst on placement as a Curatorial Intern at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.

When accessing an entomology collection, there are a few things that a researcher can expect to find. Each specimen should be pinned with labels describing its species and information about where it was collected – two valuable pieces of information which can help researchers to trace the specimen’s origin geographically and in time. Knowing where and when a specimen was collected can help researchers better understand the historical landscape and ecology and make predictions into the future. However, when collections receive specimens from private collectors, this standard of labelling might not be met. As part of a 3-month internship at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, I aimed to transform one such collection.

The collection in context 

John Henry Salter (1862-1942) was an academic and naturalist, who spent much of his life as a lecturer at University College of Wales in Aberystwyth, where he would later be appointed as the first Professor of Botany. Outside of academia, Salter was a prolific collector of insects across several groups, most notably including coleoptera (beetles) and lepidoptera (butterflies and moths). Salter’s collection contains specimens from across Wales, as well as England, Tenerife and south-east France; regions where he spent time during his retirement. The specimens, which amount to over 15,000 individuals, were meticulously recorded in field logs by Salter, which were also donated to the museum with the collection.  

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Paddy the Pangolin: Conservation of a Taxidermy Museum Specimen

This article is re-posted from a piece that appeared on the Amgueddfa Cymru blog page, 3 August 2023 with permission from the author.

Written by Madalyne Epperson, MA Conservation Practice student, Durham University – when on placement at Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd – National Museum Cardiff.

Paddy in the Wild During the Cambridge French West Africa Expedition 1957 (Pan Golin 2018)

Natural history collections are often central to our understanding of evolution, population genetics, biodiversity, and the environmental impacts of pesticide use and climate change, among other things. For this reason, caring for these collections is of great importance. A taxidermy tree pangolin – named Paddy by the conservation team – was brought to Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales in 2017 in need of attention. Paddy was collected on August 4th, 1957, by researchers during Cambridge University’s French West Africa Expedition. According to the expedition diary, Amgueddfa Cymru had asked the researchers to retrieve a pangolin to make a museum specimen, as was common practice at that time. The mounted pangolin was feared lost after the expedition’s drying tent went up in flames on August 25th, 1957. Paddy was terribly singed by the fire, which greatly disheartened the expedition team. It is perhaps for this reason that Paddy never made it to the museum when the expedition concluded. It was not until 2016/2017 that Paddy was found in Staffordshire in the home of one of the expeditions members and sent over to the museum.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – October

Compiled by Jennifer Gallichan, Curator: Vertebrates/Mollusca, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

Welcome to the October edition of NatSCA Digital Digest!

A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences and training opportunities. If you have visited an exhibition/museum, have something to say about a current topic, or perhaps you want to tell us what you’ve been working on, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Where Should I Visit?

It is definitely worth visiting Beavers to Weavers: The Wonderful World of Animal Makers exhibition at Leeds City Museum as they have just won a Museums Change Lives award in the category of environmental sustainability. More than 48,000 people visited this exhibition last year, so if you’ve not yet been, it’s worth checking out. The exhibition has an environmental focus displaying beautiful objects made by animals. Discover how animals build homes, make armour or camouflage, craft tools and traps to catch food or change their appearances to attract each other. If you want to know more there is also a great blog about it.

After its recent stay in Great North Museum: Hancock, Dippy On Tour finally comes to National Museum Cardiff this month! This will be Dippy’s only sojourn in Wales, and so is a fantastic opportunity for many to see this iconic specimen. Croeso Dippy i Gymru! There are tonnes of related events programmed, you can dance around Dippy at our Silent disco, or find your inner calm at Dippy about Yoga, so well worth a visit.

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Stories from Pressed Plant Books in the Botany Collections

Written by Katherine Slade, Curator: Botany (Lower Plants), Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales (AC-NMW)

This article was first published as a blog for AC-NMW, 17 May 2019.

Within Amgueddfa Cymru’s botany collections are books of dried plant specimens created by scientists and enthusiasts. Each specimen has been carefully dried and pressed, before being added to the books, sometimes with handwritten or printed notes alongside. The books are of enormous importance both in terms of modern scientific research into climate change and biodiversity, and as a way to see first hand the history of botanical exploration.

You can now look through a catalogue of the 36 books that contain non-flowering plants, fungi, lichens and seaweeds. You can read about a few of the stories surrounding these books below. For more detailed information about each book, please visit the website.

These books show the changes in how we collect, classify and name plants over two centuries from 1800 to present day. An old volume which probably dates from the 19th century entitled “New Zealand Mosses”, contains more than just mosses. Lichens, algae and even some pressed hydrozoans (tiny marine animals) have been included by the unknown collector who chose to group these superficially similar ‘moss-like’ specimens together. This donation entered the Museum’s collections after its Royal Charter was received and before work had begun on the present Cathays Park building.

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Meet the Committee – Jennifer Gallichan

What is your role on the NatSCA committee?

I am new to the NatSCA committee so am just starting to feel my way and find what my role might be as an Ordinary Member. I have considered joining the committee for many years, so I am really excited to finally be a part of it and just looking forward to getting involved, helping out and learning as much as I can.

Job title and institution

Curator: Mollusca & Vertebrates at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, Cardiff

Twitter Username

@jennifergallich

Tell us about your day job

I have been at National Museum Cardiff for 17 years and for the large part of this time my role has been to work as part of the team curating the mollusc collections. We have one of the largest collections of molluscs in the UK, and it is taxonomically and historically significant. In recent years however, I have also taken on the role of facilitating access to the Vertebrate Collections. As you can imagine, this has been a significant learning curve and I am still in the process of developing in this role. As with many curators, a large part of my job is making collections accessible to everyone, be it through enquiries, loans, collection tours, open days, workshops, talks, visits and everything else. My job also includes curation – adding collections to our databases, sorting labels, etc, but with so many things to cover, I don’t get as much opportunity to do this as I would like. In recent years I have been involved with collections-based research, locating and investigating Type specimens in both our own collections and those in other institutions.

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