Presented by Dr Isabel Hyman

Land Snail Systematist, Malacology, Australian Museum.



Australia's cash-strapped early museums had to get creative in order to build, trade and grow their natural history collections. Amassing large local collections was relatively easy through field collecting and donations. But these ambitious museums wanted international specimens too. Working against the constraints of distance, finances, and visibility, their most successful tool for international collecting was specimen exchange. Australia's sought-after animals could be traded for international specimens in a worldwide, museum-led market. In the absence of money, trading specimens involved a complex and changing mix of the specimens themselves alongside friendships, scientific networks and connections, scientific value, reputation and knowledge.



As part of a larger project quantifying and mapping the trade of natural history specimens in the nineteenth century, our presentation looks at the surprising extent and patterns of the exchange of animal specimens in and out of the Australian Museum's natural history collections in the last part of the nineteenth century.