A collection without a catalogue: Captain John Laskey and the missing vertebrate fossils from the...

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A collection without a catalogue: Captain John Laskey and the

missing vertebrate fossils from the collection of William Hunter

Jeff Liston

William Hunter (1718–83) lacked the wherewithal earlier in his career, but on becoming financially independent from his father in 1754 he expanded his anatomical collections with purchases of books, manuscripts and portraits of figures from the history of medicine. Hunter’s concept of his museum altered further and in 1767 he embarked on acquiring natural history specimens and objects from other subject areas. By the time of his death, the numbers of both his coins and medals and natural history objects far outstripped the other contents.1 Unlike many others Hunter was not a ‘stamp collector’, simply compiling a cabinet of curiosities or sybaritic expressions of status, but acquired natural history material with the aim of supplementing his knowledge and interest in the subject.2

Sins of omission – fossil material within ‘natural history’

In addition to his published writings, Hunter’s correspondence reveals an interest in fossil or unknown vertebrates. As early as January 1757, a letter from Emanuel Mendes Da Costa records the writer’s understanding that he would put his name down as a subscriber for a forthcoming book on the ‘History of Fossils’.3 A further letter from Da Costa in January of 1771 mentions Hunter attending his first series of lectures on fossils.4 An extract of a letter to Ingham Foster from the Reverend William Gostling of Canterbury, dated 23 June 1767, records a series of rhomboidal scales the colour of glue with a polish like tortoiseshell (highly reminiscent of the remains of a fish called Lepidotes) discovered in the ‘Wild of Kent’.5 A note to Hunter from Thomas Wallis informed him of the bones of an unknown animal ‘much larger than the elephant’ from the Cape of Good Hope.6

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© 2015From E. Geoffrey Hancock, Nick Pearce and Mungo Campbell (eds), William Hunter’s World: The Art and

Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting, published by Ashgate Publishing. See: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409447740



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It is known that William Hunter was unusual amongst eighteenth-century collectors in formally and publicly arguing that fossils could represent the remains of extinct animals, a view at odds with orthodoxy at the time rooted in the Great Chain of Being.7, 8 Illingworth described Hunter: ‘in the midst of a crowd he was a master of himself ’.9 ‘Fossils’ are listed by Hunter (it is the first natural science category that he notes after his anatomical preparations, distinguished from ‘Ores’) in his ‘English will’, a document that covered the disposal of his property and collections in London, and required the three trustees (Charles Combe, David Pitcairn and George Fordyce) to ensure that all of the collections were fully catalogued prior to transportation to Glasgow.10 However, this task was not completed for all areas of the collections. By 1794, 11 years after Hunter’s death, Hunter’s nephew Matthew Hunter Baillie stated that catalogues had been made of ‘everything which is valuable’, yet the six catalogues (some of up to 500 pages) that had finally arrived by October 1797 only covered the anatomical preparations, books, coins, minerals, shells and insects.11 Although an excuse is made by Baillie for the collection of manuscripts remaining uncatalogued (as it was difficult to catalogue texts in such a wide range of Eastern Languages without having someone who actually understood the specific languages), no reference is made to a catalogue even being attempted for the pictures or the ‘South Sea Curiosities’ (ethnographic material). Within the catalogue for minerals,12 although there is some mention of fossil wood, no record of any fossilised animal remains or recent zoological specimens apart from shells and insects is recorded.13 The fault for this lies squarely at the door of George Fordyce (a former pupil of William’s), who had been cataloguing the minerals while Hunter was still alive, and was reported as working on the natural history objects (presumably already largely covered by Fabricius during Hunter’s life)14 over the summer of 1783.15

So any fossil material that William Hunter had, although indicated as present in his will, was not recorded by the Trustees. In addition, there does not appear to have been a tradition to register Hunter’s fossil material as belonging to Hunter for many years after the material arrived in Glasgow, as discussed elsewhere,16 the current written collection registers being largely twentieth-century work.17, 18 This means that the first records of Hunter’s fossil material are once it appears on display in the first Hunterian Museum, some years after it opened in 1807, in the Account to the displays written by Captain John Laskey.19

Laskey’s exhibition Account: recording the uncatalogued collection

Laskey can be read as an undertaking whose style was inspired by his attendance at the mammoth 60-day auction of the contents of Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum in 1806.20 He was at that auction in his capacity as a buyer for The Hunterian in order to acquire more specimens and supplement its collections (securing over 120 natural science lots) prior to the museum opening the following year.21 As a result of attending, it is likely that either before or after he had at least a passing contact with the Companion to the Lever Museum.22 It is likely that he also came into contact with another attendee at the auction, James Parkinson, a medical man with a passion for palaeontology, who was then midway through his Organic Remains of a Former World series. Parkinson appears

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to have been attending the auction with a view to acquiring material relating to the later volumes of this publication,23 the first volume having been published in 1804.24 He purchased around thirty lots and judging from their recorded successful bids was present the same day as Laskey on at least 14 occasions.25

Laskey shows how impressed he was by these books, by following the maxim of ‘stealing from the best’; he used them as a basis for providing a record or snapshot of a visitor’s experience when walking through the first Glasgow incarnation of The Hunterian. From the Companion to the Lever Museum he took a stylistic template for the overall script, with sections of Parkinson’s Organic Remains of a Former World, to provide a more specific discursive contextual foundation for the specimens in the fossil saloons of his General Account of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, that he had done so much to help fill through his own donations and actions at the Leverian auction itself. Laskey recycles, paraphrases and quotes extensively from Parkinson, so that it constitutes two thirds of the text, with only a third devoted to describing the fossils on display.26

Laskey’s A General Account of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow acts as the nearest approximation to a ‘catalogue’ that we have for William Hunter’s fossil collection upon its arrival in Scotland.

Counting on Laskey’s Account as a tool

Description extraction

Laskey’s book rewards the careful reader. Amongst the appropriated text and obligatory name-dropping in the ‘Fossils’ section (including ten references to James Parkinson, thirteen to Georges Cuvier, four to Dr William Hunter, two to Mr John Hunter, eight to Edward Lhwyd, and to himself – Laskey – a mere three separate mentions), he is also extremely good at identifying when particular specimens did not come from Hunter, which is invaluable for the purposes of retrospectively identifying Hunter specimens – Kaeppler also notes the rigour that he took in this regard with respect to the specimens he acquired at the Leverian auction.27 At this time, he is in a particularly strong position to do this, given both his role in procuring specimens for The Hunterian at the Leverian auction some seven years earlier, and his personal donation of others. In this regard, a good example is his description of a mastodon tooth (Fig. 12.1), clearly identifiable from weight and description of wear, donated by the surgeon Charles Wilsone in 1807.28

This ability to have the source of the material clearly identified is critical to the usefulness of Laskey as a proxy for a collection catalogue, as opposed to merely a description of case displays. Nonetheless, the prospect of utilising Laskey’s 133-page Account, by transforming it into a catalogue of individual specimens, can seem daunting. There are over 18,000 words devoted to the fossil saloons. But once the contextual sections have been removed, that word count drops to 6,516. Within that resulting tract of text, it is clear that certain fossils are more likely to be described in a way that makes them identifiable as unique objects than others. For example, there are very clear differences between the treatment of palaeobotanical items (largely mentioned in a





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fairly nondescript fashion), fossil invertebrates (usually present in groups, but with little in the way of taxonomic names or other descriptive information to make identification possible) and fossilised vertebrate remains (present in small numbers, if not in isolation, and with enough information present to make them identifiable). This is a reflection of the fact that within the fossil record, vertebrate material is scarce in comparison

12.1 Mastodon tooth GLAHM V5132, identifiable from Laskey’s description of weight and wear, donated by the surgeon Charles Wilsone in 1809 to the Hunterian Museum after it opened in Glasgow. Courtesy of The Hunterian





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to invertebrate or plant. This intrinsic rarity means that vertebrate fossils are more likely to receive an additional distinguishing remark from Laskey, and therefore are more intrinsically likely to be identifiable from his account. In short, the scarcity and geographic restriction that make vertebrates generally of little utility as zone fossils in stratigraphy argue strongly for their use as distinctive specimens for retrospective identification from this Account. It also means that we can deduce more about the presence of vertebrate material belonging to Hunter than any other fossil material, simply because these specimens are more likely to be unique.

In addition, it is worth noting that as vertebrates perhaps more acutely represented the concept of biological change and demise to Hunter’s contemporaries – being traditionally highly placed in the Chain of Being29 – therefore these specimens would have been likely to have been of more personal value to Hunter.30 In order to test whether or not William Hunter’s specimens can be retrospectively identified from Laskey’s descriptions, the vertebrate fossils shall be used as a model, with particular initial focus on the fossil fish material, which has been placed – with images – on to the online catalogue of the collections of The Hunterian. As this is the first group of fossils to be thoroughly processed in this manner, it can (should the method prove successful) serve as a model that can be used for other parts of the collection as they are added to the online catalogue in future years.

When extracting descriptions, wherever an object was not clearly discrete (as in 11 out of the 28 examples), a count was taken for the number of components of a given fossil type that Laskey appeared to be indicating were present, as these figures might help distinguish likely candidate specimens. In deriving these quantities, Laskey’s use of unconstrained collective terms for some specimens meant that estimates were necessary. Sections prefaced by the words ‘several’ or ‘teeth marked’ are interpreted as indicating a number larger than two, but no larger than ten. This meant that estimates for the total number of vertebrate fossils produced a range of between 53 and 130 specimens on display from Hunter’s collection in 1813. This then constrained the maximum quantity of components that might be identifiable from Laskey’s account, within today’s collections. Although the maximum figure may seem unnecessarily large, it should be noted that one unestimated description referred to ‘an assemblage of fossil bones not ascertained’, which appears to be a quantity much larger than that implied by ‘several’.

specimen matching

After having extracted vertebrate descriptions from Laskey, specimens from within The Hunterian collections were identified matching these descriptions. This was comparatively straightforward, through the use of the search facility in the computer-based catalogue. Associated images for every object record further enabled swift comparison with any visual description noted by Laskey.

process of elimination

The list of specimens produced for any given description could then be screened, so as to exclude specimens that matched but had identifiable donors, therefore could not be





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attributed to Hunter. In addition, it should be noted that of the collections possessed by the University of Glasgow prior to the arrival of Hunter’s collections, there are no records of any natural science materials, solely scientific instruments, some paintings and Roman stones,31 thanks to Robert Wodrow’s activities as university librarian.32, 33 The remaining numbers of specimens compatible with Laskey’s description are thus solid candidate material for having originally constituted part of Hunter’s original collection in Great Windmill Street. Although it could be argued that this material was simply from another source, and only coincidentally the same, this is far less likely: one would need Hunter’s specimens to have been disposed of, then for material to be acquired that duplicated Laskey’s description of the original, then lose the provenance information of that duplicate material – which would indeed be a most damning realisation of Fabricius’ fear that Hunter’s collection would simply ‘waste away’ if removed to Glasgow, were it to prove true.34 Invoking Occam’s Razor35 (or Lex Parsimoniae, the law of parsimony) and the requirement that ‘entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity’, the most likely solution is that materials identified to a finite number compatible with Laskey’s enumeration are in fact those same specimens.

This is another reason why the use of vertebrates is favoured over invertebrate or plant fossils: the small number of post-screening specimens is reflected by the scarceness of the discovery of such material in the field. This in turn means that they are more likely to be unique – and also less likely to have been discarded and then later replaced by similarly unique material. This means that more can be deduced about the occurrence of vertebrate than any other fossils belonging to Hunter, generally because their diversity makes them more identifiable.

Results: ‘found and lost’

Of the 28 descriptions of displayed fossil vertebrate material in Laskey’s Account, more than half refer unequivocally to fossil fish material. It is within this category that we might hope to use identifications to match material in the computer catalogue, as these are the sections covered by Hunter’s fossil vertebrate material that have currently been transferred (with image record) in their entirety to the computer catalogue.

As part of the computerised cataloguing process involves the centralisation (including loan recalls) of all representatives of a particular collection prior to their assessment and taxonomic sorting, the fact that the entire section of The Hunterian collection of that area has been transferred becomes significant, because it eliminates the possibility that there are further relevant Hunterian specimens that have not been included in the overall computer search and assessment. In other words, all surviving specimens in The Hunterian of fossil fish have been included in this process.

It should be noted that any taxonomic names that Laskey used in relation to fossil fish material are largely redundant through complex synonymy and reidentification, so names cannot simply be ‘looked up’ in the collection registers. For a specimen to qualify as ‘successfully identified’, it has to have the right combination of taxonomy or other physical descriptor, as well as geography. Of the 16 descriptions under consideration,





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five are noted as from ‘Sheppey Island’ or elsewhere in Kent. As a common source of fossil fish material (in particular isolated teeth), this renders the locality information to be a somewhat weak identifier, as it discriminates poorly within the collection – although it is worth noting that descriptions 836 and 2537 are very reminiscent of the specimen described in the Reverend Gostling of Canterbury’s 1767 letter mentioned earlier.38

A further five descriptions either lack any localising information, or are poorly geographically constrained within England. Laskey’s tendency to cite localities ambiguously within his discursive fossil Account, rather than specific sources of the specimens seen in the case that he is describing, can be frustrating. But specimens from non-British sources are easier to identify, by virtue of their scarcity.

Description 5 refers to ‘Fossil Fish from Vestena Nuova, commonly called Monte Bolca’.39 Laskey notes ‘several’ in Case A ‘and the adjoining one’, which is estimated to define a number between three and ten. Four specimens that lack donor information are identifiable from this locality (Fig. 12.2).

12.2 ‘Fossil Fish from Vestena Nuova, commonly called Monte Bolca’. Laskey notes ‘several’ and these four are candidates: GLAHM V3300 Amphistium paradoxum, indeterminate clupeids GLAHM V3302 and GLAHM V3303, and indeterminate percoid GLAHM V3310. Courtesy of The Hunterian



12.3 ‘… from Eisleben in the county of Mansfeldt in Upper Saxony’; GLAHM V3240 Palaeoniscus frieslebeni. Courtesy of The Hunterian

12.4 ‘A fine specimen, nearly perfect, about ten inches in length, of the fossil remains of a fish in chalk.’ The most likely, yet still unconvincing, candidate for

such a specimen of suitable length and lacking donor information (and could thus be from William Hunter) is an exquisite Protosphyraena pectoral fin (GLAHM

V3473), noted as coming from Gravesend. Courtesy of The Hunterian





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Description 6 refers to ‘Fossil Fish in a black fissile stone, from Gijon near Naples.[40] A similar Specimen from Eisleben in the county of Mansfeldt in Upper Saxony.’ Although no specimens lacking donor information can be identified from the former locality, one clear specimen from Eisleben (GLAHM V3240 Palaeoniscus frieslebeni) is evident, matching the single specimen referred to by Laskey (Fig. 12.3).

Description 7 notes ‘A fine specimen, nearly perfect, about ten inches in length, of the fossil remains of a fish in chalk’.41 This might seem more easily traceable, yet the only candidate for such a specimen of suitable length and lacking donor information (and could thus be from William Hunter) is an exquisite specimen of a Protosphyraena pectoral fin (GLAHM V3473), noted as coming from Gravesend. It has to be acknowledged that in this case there is more than a little ambiguity as to whether Laskey would have described an isolated pectoral fin, however well-preserved, as a ‘fine specimen … of the fossil remains of a fish’, especially when sitting in the same display case as Bolca fish described as ‘in fine preservation’ (Fig. 12.4).

Description 9 as ‘Vertebrae of Fish from Sheppey Island’ is unidentifiable.42 Description 11 as the ‘Indurated slab of blue clay’ with fish bones from Sheppey is similarly unidentifiable, but as it was noted in 1813 as ‘pyritous’; it may well have simply decayed over time if not kept in environmentally stable conditions.43

Descriptions 10 and 12–19 are descriptions of tooth morphologies, mostly shark, with variously antiquated taxonomic names.44, 45 These prove particularly difficult to trace, as what was meant by these names was somewhat subjective for each author before illustrations of specimens with their descriptions became commonplace. However, a copy of Laskey’s book exists in the Rothschild Collection, which uniquely contains an illustrative ‘plate’, compiled by Laskey (as identified by his signature on it, beneath the legend).46 It is supplemented by some facing images of teeth apparently removed from a volume of either Steno or Mercati’s original.47, 48, 49 It is not clear whether this was once Laskey’s personal annotated copy, or some attempt at drafting a second edition but the juxtaposition of this series of images helps us to understand precisely the morphology that Laskey was referring to in his Account (Fig. 12.5). This is because the 11 images on the plate appear to be directly traced from plate XIX of James Parkinson’s volume 3 of Organic Remains … (1811), an interpretation borne out by Laskey’s near verbatim use of the captions for Parkinson’s Plate XIX in his General Account (Fig. 12.6). This means that Laskey’s names can be tied to a given modern chondrichthyan taxon, regardless of how out of date the original terminology that he used now is.

Description 10 as ‘slug palates’ or ‘Palatum Limax’,50 once related to Parkinson’s figure 15 of plate XIX (although not included in Laskey’s traced illustrations from plate XIX)51 can be identified as hybodontid tooth plates often referred to Asteracanthus or Acrodus. No specimen in The Hunterian’s current holdings can be identified as matching this form and lacking donor information.





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Description 12 relates to ‘Squalus Carcharius’ (Parkinson figure 11),52 for which GLAHM V3312, GLAHM V3315, GLAHM V3318 and GLAHM V3319 are all matches without donor information that conform to this form, but as the displayed specimen is referred to as a singular component, it is most likely to be either GLAHM V3312 (Fig. 12.7) or GLAHM V3318 (Fig. 12.8). Impossible though it would be to distinguish between these two candidates for Hunter’s displayed specimen without further information, this problem does not arise for Description 13 ‘straight, conical Glossopetrae, from Malta’,53 for which specimen GLAHM V3336 (Fig. 12.9) of indeterminate Lamniformes teeth is the only match lacking donor information.

Description 14 refers to ‘Squalus Galeus’,54 particularly in the context of Lhwyd’s (1699) specimen ‘Acanthios’, figured as No. 1417 (Fig. 12.10)55 (reproduced by Gunther56), and Laskey makes the link in his text to Cuvier’s ‘Squalus Mustelus’ (Parkinson figure 3). Unfortunately, no match lacking provenance information can be made.

In Description 15 Laskey refers to teeth ‘somewhat resembling “Squalus Squatina”’ (Parkinson plate, figure 9), and the only specimen that fits this description and lacks donor information is GLAHM V3332, Striatolamia lamna (Fig. 12.11).57 Description 16 refers to ‘Conichthyodontes rectiretes’ (Parkinson figure 8), for which the only specimen lacking donor information is GLAHM V3333, Lamna (Fig. 12.12).58

12.5 Fold-out page in copy of Laskey’s General Account … annotated by the author. Copyright Natural History Museum, London, Rothschild Library



12.6 Plate XIX from Parkinson’s vol. 3 of Organic Remains …. Note how the 11 images traced by Laskey directly match 11 of the 18 on Parkinson’s plate. Photograph courtesy of Jeff Liston



12.7 Laskey’s ‘Squalus Carcharius’ candidate 1; tooth of Carcharodon, GLAHM V3312. Courtesy of The Hunterian



12.8 Laskey’s ‘Squalus Carcharius’ candidate 2; tooth of Carcharocles megalodon, GLAHM V3318. Courtesy of The Hunterian



12.9 Laskey’s ‘straight, conical Glossopetrae, from Malta’; specimen GLAHM V3336 of indeterminate Lamniformes teeth. Courtesy of The Hunterian



12.10 Lhwyd’s ‘Acanthios’ specimen no. 1417 at bottom right as figured in his table 15. Photograph courtesy of Jeff Liston



12.11 Laskey’s ‘somewhat resembling “Squalus Squatina”’, specimen GLAHM V3332, Striatolamia lamna. Courtesy of The Hunterian

12.12 Laskey’s ‘Conichthyodontes rectiretes’; GLAHM V3333, Lamna. Courtesy of The Hunterian





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Description 17 refers to ‘Conichthyodontes striati’ (Parkinson figure 4), which Laskey points out is actually interpreted as a reptilian tooth (terrestrial or marine).59 As the reptiles have not yet been added in their entirety to the computer catalogue, material matching this description will be reviewed for a later work.

Description 18 refers to ‘Bufonites’ teeth (Parkinson figures 6, 7 and 12),60 generally referable to Lepidotes (although Parkinson 7 was referred to Pycnodus by Agassiz),61 but no specimens of either taxon are present in The Hunterian with the appropriate lack of donor information.

Discussion: still missing

The retrospective reidentification of fossil specimens through the use of historical texts has precedent, for example in the work of Edmonds and Hambridge to rediscover the ‘lost’ seventeenth-century collections of Edward Lhwyd at the Ashmolean Museum, where they had similarly been absorbed into the anonymity of the general collection.62 However, unlike that exercise, this work takes place in the absence of direct illustrations of the specimens concerned with which to aid identification.

It is also worth noting that although one might argue that it is unlikely that all of Hunter’s fossil material was put on display in the galleries described by Laskey, there is no known resource that indicates conclusively whether this was or was not the case.

There are some particularly disappointing absences from this trawl of the collections that one might have expected to be more immediately detectable. Although only two specimens exist within The Hunterian collections specifically referred to the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous locality of Gijon (Naples), they both possess donor information (GLAHM V3651 and GLAHM 149157, both Mont Sant’Angelo pycnodonts from Wintour Frederick Gwinnell (1846–1921), an early twentieth-century donor to the collections)63 and therefore cannot be identified as Hunter’s as per Laskey’s Description 6 above.

The Vestena Nuova or ‘Monte’ Bolca (Laskey’s Description 5 above) Eocene fishes have been quarried for centuries, but the recorded presence of material in Hunter’s collection from the Maastrichtian locality of St Peter’s Mountain is highly unusual, as this locality only began to be worked for fossils in 1780,64 a mere three years prior to Hunter’s death. Although specimens from this locality could not be determined within The Hunterian collections, this does highlight the efficiency of Hunter’s agents in procuring material for him, even from comparatively new localities.

Similarly, a list of specimens for sale from a dealer exists in Hunter’s correspondence,65 one offering fossil fish from the locality of Russia’s White River. This is particularly noteworthy, as Russian palaeontologists were unaware that this locality had been collected from prior to the early nineteenth century.66 As has been intimated elsewhere, the importance of documentation for fossil collections – even where the collections are no longer identifiable – cannot be overstated.67

Laskey’s Account provides a description of William Hunter’s Museum in Glasgow shortly after opening. It provides an insight into the fossil material delivered in his bequest. There is one other potential source of information to what was in the early displays, the volume





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noted in Special Collections of the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum Records as ‘Catalogue of Minerals’,68 dated at 1809–10 (some of the contained paper watermarked as 1802). It is written in what has been identified as the handwriting of Robert Jameson, Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh from 1804 to 1854, and acquainted with Hunter’s Museum when it was still in London. It contains some notes on the layout of the mineral cases, presumably dating from his engagement in October 1807 to arrange the ‘minerals’.69 A note in Ian Rolfe’s handwriting observes that much of the contents of this match with the description contained in Laskey’s Account. Of particular interest is an inserted piece of paper with details for the contents of Cabinet ‘U’ that appears to correspond with Laskey’s descriptions of displayed material, but additionally noting: ‘8 – Petrified fish in Limestone from Pappenheim, 1 box also dendritic delineations, Belemnites, Gryphite, Trochite, Pectinites, Serpulite, petrified fish in bituminous marl slate from Thuringia (4 specimens)’. If this piece of paper is contemporary, then it offers further details of some specimens not fully itemised in Laskey. This could be argued to be due to alteration of displays either before or after Laskey’s Account. However, the Hunterian records 11,538 visitors while open from 1808 to 1810, not indicating a lack of public interest that might warrant any refreshing of displays.70 Indeed, we have no indication of any change to the fossil displays in The Hunterian from the time of its opening in 1807 to the material being packed for movement from the High Street to the University’s new campus location at Gilmorehill in 1870. Although the ‘Thuringia’ reference would certainly cover the Eisleben specimen (GLAHM V3240 Palaeoniscus frieslebeni) referred to earlier, and possibly indicates another Thuringian fossil fish without donor information (GLAHM V3250 Pygopterus humboldti), what is more worthy of attention is the noting of a fish specimen from Pappenheim. As the Solnhofen limestone only experienced a surge in its quarrying with the advent of Alois Senefelder’s lithographic printing in 1798, Hunter appears to have been acquiring Solnhofen fossils before the real increase in its quarrying as a fine-grained stone for detailed printing.71 Although there are plenty of invertebrate Pappenheim fossils mentioned within Laskey’s Account, no fossil fish is mentioned from there. However, a careful review of the collection material in The Hunterian today provides a possible explanation.

The omission of the mention of a fish from what became the world-famous Jurassic Solnhofen limestone could be due to the material being inadvertently grouped by Laskey with similar material in his account. In this regard, of the material that he lists, a limestone fossil fish could most easily be confused with specimens from the similarly famous but much younger Eocene fossil fish locality of Bolca in northern Italy. Within The Hunterian collection, there is a single fossil fish specimen (GLAHM V3299, Leptolepis sprattiformis) from the Solnhofen limestone that lacks a named donor (Fig. 12.13). It was misidentified in the Registers of the Museum as being from the ‘Kainozoic of Italy’ (the Bolca material in The Hunterian commonly has its provenance referred to in this form), and this was only corrected after the specimen was subjected to analysis under ultra-violet light in 2011, which revealed otherwise invisible ink traces from a pre-existing label. The legend from that label could be clearly read as stating: ‘Impression of Fish from Papenheim’. It appears most likely that this is indeed the specimen referred to on the paper within Jameson’s volume, and that it formed part of the displays in the old Hunterian Museum.





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Conclusion

Unusual though it may be for a historical exhibition Account to serve as more than a simple historical record of the fashion of displays at a particular moment in the history of a museum’s displays, this particular book has demonstrated its power as a primary indicator of a collection’s contents, when coupled with the rigorous ordering (and curation) of a collection, as a means to reveal original collection objects. This work, which has identified material matching seven of Laskey’s descriptions (or eleven specimens) of previously ‘lost’ vertebrate fossil fish from William Hunter, is presenting ‘early results’ on the first group processed on to the electronic catalogue. With this methodology proven, it can form a model for other taxonomic groups in the collections of The Hunterian, as they continue to be processed on to the computer catalogue. Now that both the bony and cartilaginous fish material have been assessed in this manner, the remaining fossil material (mammalian, plus the isolated reptile tooth) will be able to be treated in the same way once it is similarly added to the computerised catalogue, in search of more lost William Hunter vertebrate fossils.

12.13 The Pappenheim specimen of Robert Jameson; GLAHM V3299, Leptolepis sprattiformis. The traces of where the old label once adhered can be seen in a corner of the slab. Courtesy of The Hunterian





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Acknowledgements

No list gratefully acknowledging the contribution and support of others would be appropriate without Ian Rolfe as the first name mentioned: we stand on the shoulders of giants often in this field, and none of this work would have been possible without Ian and Constance Helen Brock’s rigorous work focused around the bicentenary of William’s death. I am only able to take theirs a little further through the use of a computerised database after exhaustive treatment of a collection that I had grown more familiar with than any other. Cherry Lewis was extremely patient in providing information on Lord Bute’s government; Sally-Anne Coupar and Ian Rolfe both facilitated access to Leverian Museum information; and Gilles Cuny provided the modern engine of contemporary shark taxonomy to arrange much of the material attributable to Hunter, with Chris Duffin advising on some of the vagaries of pre-Cuvier ‘taxonomy’.

Bibliography

Brock, C.H., Calendar of the Correspondence of Dr William Hunter 1740–1783 (Cambridge: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1996).

———, The Correspondence of Dr William Hunter (1771–83) (2 vols, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008).

Durant, G.P., and Rolfe, W.D.I., ‘William Hunter (1718–1783) as Natural Historian: His ‘Geological’ Interests, Earth Sciences History 3, no. 1 (1984): 9–24.

Durkan, J., ‘The Early History of Glasgow University Library’, The Bibliotheck 8 (1977): 102–26.

Eccleshall, R., and Walker, G. (eds), Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (London: Routledge, 1998).

Edmonds, J.M., ‘Proceedings’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 106, no. 1 (1950): vi–vii.

Gunther, R.T., Early Science in Oxford. Vol. XIV: Life and Letters of Edward Lhwyd Second Keeper of the Musaeum Ashmoleanum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945).

Illingworth, C., The Story of William Hunter (Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone Ltd, 1967).

Kaeppler, A.L., Holophusicon: The Leverian Museum. An Eighteenth-Century Institution of Science, Curiosity and Art (Altenstadt: ZKF, 2011).

Keppie, L.J., Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow, Monograph series 13 (London: Britannia, 1998).

———, William Hunter and the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, 1807–2007 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007).

King, J.C.H., ‘New Evidence for the Contents of the Leverian Museum’, Journal of the History of Collections 8, no. 2 (1996): 167–86.





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Laskey, J., A General Account of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow including historical and scientific notices of the various objects of art, literature, natural history, anatomical preparations, antiquities, &c. in that celebrated collection (Glasgow: John Smith & Son, 1813).

Leverian Museum. A Companion to the Museum, MDCCXC. The Sale Catalogue of the Entire Collection, 1806 (London: Hammer Johnson & John Hewett, 1979).

Lewis, C.L.E., ‘“Our Favourite Science”: Lord Bute and James Parkinson Searching for a Theory of the Earth’, in M. Kölbl-Ebert (ed.), Geology and Religion: A History of Harmony and Hostility, Special Publications 310 (London: Geological Society, 2009), pp. 111–26.

Lhwyd [Luidius], Edward, Lithophylacii Britannici ichnographia (Oxford, 1699).

Liston, J.J., ‘Pulling Teeth: The Riddle of the Ancients, or What Exactly did My Predecessor Curator Mean when they Wrote That? Retrospective Identification of William Hunter’s Fossil Mammal Material’, Geological Curator 9, no. 7 (2012): 389–407.

———, and Noè, L.F., ‘The Tail of the Jurassic Fish Leedsichthys problematicus (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii) Collected by Alfred Nicholson Leeds – an Example of the Importance of Historical Records in Palaeontology’, Archives of Natural History 31 (2004): 236–52.

Lovejoy, A.O., The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1936).

Mercatus, M., Metallotheca vaticana (Rome, 1719).

Onions, C.T. (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

Parkinson, J., Organic Remains of a Former World: An examination of the mineralized remains of the vegetables and animals of the Antediluvian World; generally termed extraneous fossils (3 vols, London: Whittingham & Rowland, 1804, 1807, 1811).

Picard, L., Dr Johnson’s London: Everyday Life in London in the Mid Eighteenth Century (London: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2001).

Rolfe, W.D.I., ‘William and John Hunter: Breaking the Great Chain of Being’, in W.F. Bynum and R. Porter (eds), William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 297–319.

Rudwick, M.J.S., The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology (London: MacDonald, 1972).

Soanes, C., and Stevenson, A. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Stace, H.E., Pettit, C.W.A., and Waterston, C.D., Natural Science Collections in Scotland: Botany, Geology, Zoology (Edinburgh: NMSE, 1988).

Stenonis, N., Elementorum Myologiae Specimen, seu Musculi description Geometrica. cui addendant Canis Carchariae dissectum Caput, et Dissectus Piscus ex Canum genere (Florence, 1667).





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Notes

1. Lawrence Keppie, William Hunter and the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, 1807–2007 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), pp. 19–20.

2. Ian Rolfe, ‘William and John Hunter: Breaking the Great Chain of Being’, in W.F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds), William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 297–319.

3. C.H. Brock, The Correspondence of Dr William Hunter (1771–83) (2 vols, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008), vol. 1, p. 81.

4. Brock, Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 4.

5. Glasgow University Library, Special Collections, GB 0247 MS Hunter H185.

6. GB 0247 MS Hunter H186.

7. Graham Durant and Ian Rolfe, ‘William Hunter (1718–1783) as Natural Historian: His ‘Geological’ Interests’, Earth Sciences History 3 no. 1 (1984): 9–24.

8. Rolfe, ‘William and John Hunter’.

9. Charles Illingworth, The Story of William Hunter (Edinburgh: E. & S. Livingstone Ltd, 1967), 134 pages.

10. Keppie, William Hunter, p. 32.


12. GB 0247 MR23, GB 0247 MR24.

13. GB 0247 MR17, GB 0247 MR18, GB 0247MR21.



16. Jeff Liston, ‘Pulling Teeth: The Riddle of the Ancients, or What Exactly did my Predecessor Curator Mean when they Wrote That? Retrospective Identification of William Hunter’s Fossil Mammal Material’, Geological Curator 9, no. 7 (2012): 389–408. Table 1 for full list.

17. W.D. Ian Rolfe, pers. comm., February 2012.

18. The one exception to this is in Fabricius’ 1784 account, where he refers in passing to the Megaloceros antlers, as quoted in translation by Keppie, William Hunter, p. 25.

19. John Laskey, A General Account of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow including historical and scientific notices of the various objects of art, literature, natural history, anatomical preparations, antiquities, &c. in that celebrated collection (Glasgow: John Smith & Son, 1813), 133 pages.

20. J.C.H. King, ‘New Evidence for the Contents of the Leverian Museum’, Journal of the History of Collections 8, no. 2 (1996): 167–86.

21. Adrienne Kaeppler, Holophusicon: The Leverian Museum. An Eighteenth-Century Institution of Science, Curiosity and Art (Altenstadt: ZKF, 2011), p. 18.

22. Leverian Museum. A Companion to the Museum, MDCCXC. The Sale Catalogue of the Entire Collection, 1806. (London: Hammer Johnson & John Hewett, 1979).

23. James Parkinson, Organic Remains of a Former World: An examination of the mineralized remains of the vegetables and animals of the Antediluvian World; generally termed extraneous fossils (London: Whittingham & Rowland, vol. 1 1804, vol. 2 1808, vol. 3 1811).





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24. Cherry Lewis, ‘“Our Favourite Science” : Lord Bute and James Parkinson Searching for a Theory of the Earth’, in M. Kölbl-Ebert (ed.), Geology and Religion: A History of Harmony and Hostility (London: Geological Society, 2009), pp. 111–26.

25. Lewis, ‘Our Favourite Science’, but see also Kaeppler, Holophusicon, p. 19, which notes variations in attributions in the 12 different annotated sales catalogues known to have survived.

26. This practice was not restricted to fossils: see Lawrence Keppie, Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow, Monograph series 13 (London: Britannia, 1998), p. 34.

27. Kaeppler, Holophusicon, p. 105.

28. Laskey, General Account, p. 128. In spite of this clear identification, GLAHM V5132 was erroneously displayed by The Hunterian as a William Hunter specimen for their bicentenary in 2007, despite having been donated to the University of Glasgow more than 25 years after Hunter’s death. Ironically, in the very next sentence of his Account, Laskey then identifies a further specimen (GLAHM V5129), again clearly identifiable by weight and wear, as having come from William Hunter’s original collection.

29. Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1936), 382 pages.

30. Durant and Rolfe ‘William Hunter as Natural Historian’, p. 16; Rolfe, ‘William and John Hunter’, p. 310.

31. L.J. Keppie, pers. comm., February 2012, and Keppie, Roman Inscribed and Sculptured Stones.

32. John Durkan, ‘The Early History of Glasgow University Library’, The Bibliotheck, 8 (1977): 102–26.

33. Save for one ‘large human tooth’, Durkan, ‘Early History’, p. 125.


35. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (eds), Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 1215.

36. Laskey, General Account, p. 114.


38. GB 0247 MS Hunter H185.







45. Laskey, General Account, pp. 125–7.

46. Accession no. 264799, Rothschild Library, Natural History Museum at Tring.

47. Nicolaus Stenonis, Elementorum Myologiae Specimen, seu Musculi description Geometrica. cui addendant Canis Carchariae dissectum Caput, et Dissectus Piscus ex Canum genere (Florence, 1667).

48. Michaelus Mercatus, Metallotheca vaticana (Rome, 1719).





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49. Martin Rudwick, The Meaning of Fossils: Episodes in the History of Palaeontology (London: MacDonald, 1972), pp. 51–2.


51. Parkinson, Organic Remains, vol. 3, pl. XIX.




55. Edward Lhwyd, Lithophylacii Britannica ichnographia (Oxford, 1699), Table 15.

56. Robert Gunther, Early Science in Oxford. Vol. XIV: Life and Letters of Edward Lhwyd Second Keeper of the Musaeum Ashmoleanum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), p. 147.





61. W.D. Ian Rolfe, pers. comm., February 2012.

62. James Marmaduke Edmonds, ‘Proceedings’, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 106, no. 1 (1950): vi–vii.

63. H.E. Stace, C.W.A. Pettit and C.D. Waterston, Natural Science Collections in Scotland: Botany, Geology, Zoology (Edinburgh: NMSE, 1988).

64. Nathalie Bardet, pers. comm., 6 May 2008.

65. GB 0247 MS Hunter H196(1).

66. Oleg Lebedev, pers. comm., 16 January 2006.

67. Jeff Liston and Leslie Noè, ‘The Tail of the Jurassic Fish Leedsichthys problematicus (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii) Collected by Alfred Nicholson Leeds – an Example of the Importance of Historical Records in Palaeontology’, Archives of Natural History 31 (2004): 236–52.

68. GB 0247 MR 24.

69. GB 0247 MR 24, p. 55.

70. GB 0247 MR 27.

71. Rudwick, Meaning of Fossils, p. 249.



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