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Stories

  • Article

The birth of the public museum

The first public museums evolved from wealthy collectors’ cabinets of curiosities and were quickly recognised as useful vehicles for culture.

  • Article

A brief history of tattoos

The earliest evidence of tattoo art dates from 5000 BC, and the practice continues to hold meaning for many cultures around the world.

  • Article

Dying to be in nature

The modern funeral business is one that uses up precious resources and pollutes the planet. But you can make sure it’s only your memory that leaves its mark with these new and natural ways to leave this earth.

  • Article

In search of the ‘nature cure’

Under the competing pressures of modern life, many of us succumb to mental ill health. Samantha Walton explores why so-called ‘nature cures’ don’t help, and how the living world can actually help us.

All stories (58)

Images

  • Darwin : big idea, big exhibition / Natural History Museum.
  • Darwin : big idea, big exhibition / Natural History Museum.
  • Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History Society.
  • The Natural History Museum, South Kensington: plan, above, and the street elevation, below. Photo-lithograph after M. B. Adams, 1879, after A. Waterhouse.
  • The British Museum: working-class people attending a guided tour and looking at exhibits of English history in glass cases and on the walls. Etching by G. Cruikshank, 1843.
  • At the Royal British School Rooms, Harp Alley, Farringdon Street, on Tuesday, 27th of Dec. 1831 at seven o'clock, a scientific lecture on the natural history of animals : ... on Thursday, 29th of Dec. 1831, at seven o'clock, a lecture on astronomy ... / will be delivered by by Mr. Henry Althans.
  • At the Royal British School Rooms, Harp Alley, Farringdon Street, on Tuesday, 27th of Dec. 1831 at seven o'clock, a scientific lecture on the natural history of animals : ... on Thursday, 29th of Dec. 1831, at seven o'clock, a lecture on astronomy ... / will be delivered by by Mr. Henry Althans.
  • Osmanthus delavayi Franch. Oleaceae Evergreen shrub. Distribution: China. Osmanthus is derived from the Greek for 'fragrant flower', delavayi from its discoverer, the French Missionary with the Missions Étrangères, and plant collector, Pierre Delavay (1834-1895). He sent 200,000 herbarium specimens containing 4000 species including 1,500 new species to Franchet at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. He sent seed of O. delavayi to France (1886), but only one germinated, and all the plants in cultivation until it was recollected 40 years later, arose from this plant (Bretschneider, 1896). The flowers are used to make a tea in China, but the berries (drupes) are not regarded as edible. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Beetle larva living on a spider-hunting wasp
  • Rapacious parasitoid (Dryinus bruneianus)
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Catalogue

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