British Museum (Natural History): Department of Zoology: Bird Section: Correspondence

This series consists of the correspondence of two successive curators of birds.

The correspondence deals with accessions to the collections, the loan and exchange of specimens, collecting expeditions, Museum and other publications, and general scientific and popular enquiries. Because Bowdler Sharpe was also in charge of the Vertebrate section, early volumes contain a certain amount of general vertebrate correspondence.

Series held at The Natural History Museum are catalogued more fully in its online catalogue (reference DF ZOO/230). Online descriptions of some individual records can also be viewed on Discovery, see DF 230.

Topics

Museums and galleries

Richard Bowdler Sharpe (1847-1909), joined the Museum in 1872, having been Librarian to the Zoological Society. Sharpe was a hard worker and a prolific writer, who became the leading ornithologist of his generation. He was author of eleven volumes of the Museum's Catalogue of Birds (1875-1899), as well as many other ornithological works. He was responsible for huge additions to the already large collection of birds. He was succeeded on his death by William Robert Ogilvie-Grant (1863-1924), who had joined the Museum in 1882 and had been Sharpe's assistant since about 1884. Ogilvie-Grant went on collecting expeditions to Socotra, the Azores and elsewhere, and was involved in major expeditions to the Ruwenzori and Dutch New Guinea. He was the author of Museum catalogues and handbook, as well as many unofficial papers and reports. He was described by his obituarist as having an overbearing temper and a sharp tongue. Ogilvie-Grant resigned through ill health in 1918.