Remember how much fun it was to clean out an attic and poke around some neat old stuff? Recently, the Division of Entomology did some “attic cleaning” in its collections.
To prepare for our move into the Class of 1954 Environmental Science Center
(ESC), the Division left the 6 rooms in the Peabody building it has
occupied for more than 30 years and moved into temporary quarters in
the Kline Geology basement. Moving both the staff offices and the
regular curated collection was pretty routine—if you can call moving
over one million insects routine. The interesting part came when we
started transferring the uncurated specimens—those that have yet to be
formally incorporated into the main collection. See other examples
below.
Above: Specimens from
around the world were often stored at the Museum in the containers in
which they were shipped, some now as rare and unusual as many of their
contents.
Many were still in the original collecting and shipping containers used
to send them to the Peabody. As we uncovered these, it became apparent
that entomologists will use anything available to store and ship
specimens. There were boxes and containers from all over the world:
British Players cigarette tins from Uganda; 1940s wooden boxes from
Iraq enscribed with the logo of the “Lion of Bagdad Date Co.”; film
canisters; pill boxes; underarm dress shield containers; British cookie
and biscuit tins from various African colonies; bright red boxes of
Lion Brand mosquito incense coils from Canton, China; Helmar Turkish
and Egyptian cigarette boxes with pithy Arabic quotes (interestingly
enough, the cigarettes were manufactured in New Jersey); Lipton tea
containers from Ceylon; and all manner of small ingenious wooden boxes.
By far the most common container these specimens were stored in was the
cigar box, an item seldom used in this age of plastic storage
containers. At last count we have amassed a collection of over 450
empty boxes. The art on these cigar boxes is worthy of an exhibit in
itself; subjects range from whiskered gentlemen of historical note or
industrial fame to bonneted ladies of all countries, Shakespearean
plays, and pastoral scenes. Of interest are the many boxes from the
several New Haven cigar manufacturers that are now long gone from the
local scene; one cover shows a painting of the long-closed drive atop
West Rock.
The largest group of uncurated specimens from these containers was that
of the papered Lepidoptera. Papering is a technique of wrapping
butterfly and moth specimens flat in folded sheets of paper; it is an
excellent method for field storage that keeps the specimen remarkably
intact for later processing (see the entomology display
on the Museum’s second floor for an example of this technique).
Butterflies and moths collected in the field can be safely stored in
paper folded into a triangle until the specimen can be catalogued.
Collections information is noted right on this packet. It is also the
best way to store these insects in a museum collection because it saves
a great deal of space compared to the usual method of pinning and
spreading specimens.
After the Division moved to the ESC, all
the papered Lepidoptera were stored in new, standardized, pest-proof,
plastic containers in a climate controlled room. Aside from a brief
descriptive label on each container, sadly there will no longer be any
hint of origins in some faraway corner of the world or of the travels
of strange boxes and tins to the Peabody Museum.