Collections

The MV Library holds an important collection of 18th and 19th century scientific literature. Many of these books began as working tools for early museum curators studying the local fauna. Now, they form part of our rare book collection and are prized for their beauty and rarity.

The library's collection has an interesting history, forming from the amalgamation of two specialist collections from the National Museum of Victoria and Science Museum. Books have been purchased since the earliest days of the National Museum of Victoria, when the first director, Frederick McCoy, acquired important titles such as the entomological works of Maria Sybilla Merian.

While the library collection at MV is relatively small, it is also surprisingly unique. Library staff are currently working to identify titles unique to Australian libraries, a project which has exposed some real gems in the collection, such as John Abbot’s The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia (1797).

Tab V, ‘American Brimstone Butterfly’ via the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Abbot left his native England in 1773 for the colony of Virginia in North America, in order to procure specimens and make drawings of the local insects. Following the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775, Abbot moved to Georgia, where he spent the rest of his life recording the local insects and birds.

Tab XLIX, ‘Corn Emperor Moth’ via the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Although he was a prolific natural history artist and well regarded in his lifetime, Abbot is not as well remembered as some of his contemporaries, who included famous naturalists such as John James Audubon. While he is thought to have created four to five thousand watercolours, most of them were unpublished or uncredited during his lifetime.

The Natural History of the Rarer Lepidopterous Insects of Georgia includes 104 hand-coloured plates by John Harris, after original artwork by John Abbot. It's an important early work to depict North American butterflies and moths, and has been appreciated by scientists and collectors alike for its accuracy as well as its beauty. The introduction was written by James Edward Smith, a founder of The Linnean Society of London.

While it is exciting to encounter rare material in our collection, it is also nice to be able to share it. Luckily, the work has been digitised and is now freely accessible through the Biodiversity Heritage Library, so have a browse online or download your own copy of this rare work!

References

Gilbert, P. & Hamilton, C., Entomology: A Guide to Information Sources, London & New York: Mansell, 1990.

Gilbert, P., John Abbot: Birds, Butterflies and Other Wonders, London: Merrell Holberton and Natural History Museum, 1998.

Job, Frank, “The Library of Museum Victoria” in Rasmussen, C. (ed.), A Museum for the People: A History of Museum Victoria and its Predecessors, 1854-2000, Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Publications, 2001.

Rogers-Price, Vivian & Griffin, William W., "John Abbot: Pioneer-Naturalist of Georgia," Magazine Antiques (October 1983): 768-75.

Kevin is our Senior Curator of Mammals. He investigates the systematics, evolution and conservation biology of mammals with a particular interest in rodents.

Greetings from the province of Sulawesi Tengah (Central Sulawesi). Last Friday 15 Feb, I flew from Jakarta to the city of Palu near the base of the northern peninsula of Sulawesi. I am accompanied by my colleague, Anang S. Achmadi, curator of mammals at Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense.

Anang S. Achmadi prepares to board the flight from Jakarat to Palu.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria  

On Saturday, Anang and I hired a driver in Palu and drove 200 km up the west coast along the Trans-Sulawesi Highway to villages around Mount Sojol (3050 m) where we are seeking a suitable field camp. An ideal camp will be set in healthy forest, have access to water, and as much flat ground as possible (steep ridges do not make for the best trapping). Our objective is to find two camps, one at low elevation (<1000 m) and a second at high elevation (>1000 m). Different species live at different elevations so to maximise the diversity of species in our surveys we try to run two camps concurrently.

Saturday afternoon we arrived in the villages west of Mount Sojol. We met with local elder Pak Waasire's son-in-law who arranged for a guide to take us into the forests that surround the mountain. On Sunday morning we met Sam, our guide, in the cacao plantations west of Mount Sojol. We hiked for three hours through cacao plantations and reached the last house at the end of trail in a thicket of ferns. Sam cut our way through ferns and we descended steeply into lowland rainforest. A hundred metres down the slope the rain began to fall and two of Sulawesi's crested black macaques, Macaca nigra, protested in the trees above us.

Our guide, Sam, followed by Anang S. Achmadi and our driver, Aziz, start the hike towards the forests of Mount Sojol.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria  

We continued down the slope for another hour and reached a flat area at the confluence of the two large rivers of the valley. We stopped and ate lunch while the rain poured down and we sheltered under a rock. We left our lunch and followed the river down stream hiking through intact rainforest for an hour and a half before reaching cacao plantations. The forest here is spectacular, a rare example of lowland forest left on Sulawesi and there is ample room for a camp. However, we are uncertain about the location of a high camp. Sam suggests that an additional full days hike uphill will bring us to another camp. We returned to the village and bid farewell to Sam.

Stopping at a river crossing, Sam points out a Sulawesi hornbill, Pnelopides exarhatus, to Anang S. Achmadi.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria  

Before we can start our camp in Sojol we must wait for the arrival of the remainder of our team who just arrived in Jakarta on Saturday (16 Feb) from Australia, Canada and the USA. On Monday, they began the paperwork that we started last week with RISTEK, Imigrasi, Polri and Dalam Negeri. While we waited for their arrival, Anang and I drove another 250 km north to the town of Toli-Toli to scout the forests around Mount Dako (2240 m) on the north coast of Sulawesi just where the northern peninsula turns east. On Monday afternoon we arrived in Toli-Toli and continued north to Kecamatan Galang where we turned east towards the mountains. We followed the road to the end where we met two locals and arranged for a guide to take us up the trail the next morning. On Tuesday we hiked several hours into lowland forest and will post the results of our hike when we are next in contact.

River where we stopped for in lowland rainforest on the west slopes of Mount Sojol.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria  

We will decide which site is most suitable for our team before this weekend (23 Feb) when we will rendezvous with them in Palu. Together we will drive back up the coast and hike into our field camp for nearly 3 weeks of remote surveys. We will post more photos next week and you can track our movements on the Sulawesi Field Team Google map.

View Sulawesi Field Team in a larger map 

Kevin is our Senior Curator of Mammals. He investigates the systematics, evolution and conservation biology of mammals with a particular interest in rodents.

I'm about to depart on the next expedition to the high mountains of Sulawesi along with MV Ornithology Fellow Karen Rowe, and MV Collection Manager of Terrestrial Vertebrates Wayne Longmore. We'll be surveying birds, rodents, bats and shrews, in areas virtually unknown to science.

Kevin Rowe in montane forest on the island of Sulawesi.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria

Karen Rowe conducting fieldwork in lower montane forest on the island of Sulawesi.
Image: Peter Smissen
Source: Museum Victoria

N. Wayne Longmore with a Sulawesi Kingfisher (Ceyx fallax) in lowland rainforest.
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria  

An evolutionary cross-roads between Australia and Asia, the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is home to mostly endemic species (those found nowhere else) and its mix of dense equatorial rainforest and mountain peaks of some 3,000 metres lends a profusion of life rarely seen worldwide.

Our primary target on the coming expedition is Mount Sojol on Sulawesi's northern peninsula. We know from observational bird surveys that vertebrate diversity is probably quite high, but there have been virtually no specimens collected from this part of Indonesia. Like many mountains on Sulawesi, only the local people really know what is there.

However, before we can start any surveys there's a lot to do. This week the team is packing equipment and supplies needed to collect and preserve specimens. On Saturday, I fly to Jakarta.

I'll spend my first week in Indonesia completing visa and permit paperwork with visits to several government offices. Between paperwork, I will prepare supplies and examine specimens with collaborators at Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense (the national zoological museum of Indonesia).

Once the paperwork is complete, I will fly to Palu, Sulawesi and will travel 200 km up the Trans-Sulawesi Highway to the village of Siboa. From Siboa, my collaborators and I will meet with local people including the village head, or kepala desa, to obtain their support and approval. With the help of local guides we will hike into the mountains where we will spend a week searching for suitable field camps. Karen, Wayne, and other collaborators from the USA will meet me in Palu after a week of completing their own paperwork in Jakarta. They will make the trek into the forest camp and begin the process of surveying the unique birds and mammals of Mount Sojol, Sulawesi.

In the sixth week, we will all return to Palu to share the results of the inventory with the Indonesian Department of Forestry before flying back to Jakarta. There we'll spend a final week packing specimens and obtaining permits to export the specimens to Australia where they will join the state collection at Museum Victoria.

The Sulawesi research trip is part of a multi-year project supported by the National Geographic Society, the Australian Pacific Science Foundation, the Ian Potter Foundation and the Hugh D T Williamson Foundation that includes key research partners Museum Victoria, the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense (National Museum of Indonesia), the Field Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, and McMaster University. The multi-national team comprises Canadian, American, Australian and Indonesian researchers.

The team's announcement that they had discovered a remarkable new rodent genus – an almost toothless, worm-eating rat, Paucidentomys vermidax – made international headlines last year.

New genus and species, Paucidentomys vermidax
Image: Kevin Rowe
Source: Museum Victoria

Skull of new genus and species, Paucidentomys vermidax, the first rodent discovered with no molars.
Image: David Paul
Source: Museum Victoria   

Your question: Where can I find out more about the coins and medals I have?

We often in the Discovery Centre receive enquiries about coins and medals. Our Collections Online website provides information about many of the coins, medals and trade tokens in the collection. We currently have approximately 7500 coins online, 2800 medals online and 2800 trade tokens online!

The obverse of the host coin and featured a laureate bust of Charles III (mostly removed with the central dump) facing right. At the bottom of the overstrike is a spray of olive leaves with the artist's initial H at its centre.
Image: Naomi Andrzejeski
Source: Museum Victoria  

Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre

You can come into the Discovery Centre and make use of the library resources from 10am until 4.30pm, Tuesday to Saturday. You can also come in and look at the coins and medals we have on display in our reference drawers, featuring medals from the International Exhibitions held at the Royal Exhibition Building in 1880 and 1888.

Silver coin - Florin (Two shillings), 1947
Image: Unknown photographer
Source: Museum Victoria  

Australian Coins and Medals

The Numismatics Association of Australia provides links to many relevant websites, and has also published online the past issues of its Journal, which has many articles of interest on the history of Australian coins and medals. See also the website of the Numismatics Association of Victoria for its activities and journal.

The National Museum of Australia features convict tokens and agricultural medals on their website.

Reserve Bank of Australia’s Museum of Australian Currency Notes provides a timeline of Australian paper money and educational resources.

The ANZ Banking Museum also provides information about Australian currency, the museum tells the story of Australia's banking heritage through displays of items such as banknotes and coins, moneyboxes, office machines, firearms, gold-mining equipment and uniforms.

Penny coin from Australia 1920 (Kookaburra side)
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria  

Useful publications include:

Leslie Carlisle Australian historical medals, 1788-1988 (2008) available in the Melbourne Museum Discovery Centre.

World Coins and Medals

The British Museum’s Department of Coins and Medals provides a guide to books, web resources and associations. The site covers not just British coins and medals, but Roman, Greek, Oriental and modern coins, tokens, medals and paper money.

The Royal Numismatics Society (UK) has a web page of links to relevant web resources.

1930 Penny, proof coin
Image: Jon Augier
Source: Museum Victoria  

Useful publications include:

Standard Catalog of World Coins, published by Krause Publications. There are separate volumes now published for each century from the seventeenth century to the present.

And see the detailed book list at http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/departments/coins_and_medals/reading_list.asp

Got a question? Ask us!

Matilda swapped a life working as an engineer for a life curating the museum’s historical Engineering collection. She’s very curious about how stuff works, how it’s made and why. If a machine’s got a switch, she’ll definitely flick it.

Last week I visited a foundry in Melbourne that was casting a vital component for our restoration of the Great Melbourne Telescope. The original part of the telescope - the declination disc - had been modified and broken at some time in its history and was not repairable.

The Great Melbourne Telescope in its own house at the Melbourne Observatory, 1870. The red arrow points to the declination disc needing replacement.
Source: Museum Victoria  

This is the first part of the project to be made by a sand moulding or casting process very similar to that which was used in Ireland in the late 1860s. Our modern part is made from a type of cast iron invented in the 1940s which has magnesium added to give it properties that make it easier to shape. The electric induction furnace, which is used to melt the metal, was developed in the early 20th century.

A couple of weeks ago, Peter made a pattern out of wood for the casting. Tom next used the pattern to form a hollow in a sand mould. This kind of mould is a mixture of washed sand and a binder, made in two halves, and cured to retain its shape once the pattern is removed. The two halves of the mould were then closed, after a pouring spout, flow paths and risers (to allow the metal to flow to and fill all sections of the hollow) were added. Heavy weights on top ensured it remained closed when the metal was poured.

The sparks fly as Bryn takes a sample from the furnace for temperature testing.
Image: Matilda Vaughan
Source: Museum Victoria  

The pounded earth floor and the filtered light through the open doorways and skylights in the roof of the foundry transported me back in time. It was 7 AM and Bryn had already been awake for hours and the sparking pot of molten metal (spheroidal graphite iron) was his morning's labour. He tested its temperature and composition, turned the knob of the electric induction furnace's control panel, and gave the signal. After the removal of the slag crust, the metal was ready for pouring.

Bryn pours the molten metal into the next mould as Tom looks on. Our filled mould is on the floor behind them.
Image: Matilda Vaughan
Source: Museum Victoria  

Bryn added the final ingredients and carefully tipped the 1500°C molten metal into the pre-heated ladle. He then transported the ladle to the moulding area and poured it first into our waiting mould, and then onto the other smaller moulds. Being such a large casting, ours needed almost 24 hours to cool down before breaking open the mould.

The lower half of the sand mould, with the casting removed. The sand from the top half is in pieces in the background. The sand will be cleaned and reused, as will the molten scraps of metal.
Image: Matilda Vaughan
Source: Museum Victoria  

At 6 AM the following morning, Bryn was ready to break open the mould. The weights were removed and the upper part of the mould lifted away. Then the casting itself was lifted into the air and the sand and metal debris removed. It was then transported by the overhead mobile crane to the finishing room, where the hardened parts of the spout, risers and flow paths were ground and knocked off and the surfaces cleaned.

Bryn (left) with the pattern for our declination disc, and Tom (right) with the freshly removed casting. Note the four cylindrical 'risers' at the edge, the pouring pathways (almost like a running person) in the middle and the square shaped pouring spout (head of the running person). These pieces are reused for the next batch of metal.
Image: Matilda Vaughan
Source: Museum Victoria  

The next step for this part will be heat treatment to 'relax' the metal, followed by the final shaping and machining. It is a rare sight to see this process so close in our urban environment and one of the great aspects to working on restoration projects of this magnitude.

Links:

Great Melbourne Telescope website

Great Melbourne Telescope on Collections Online

Emily is a third-year History of Art student at the University of Birmingham. She worked at MV after winning a Global Challenge award which gives students opportunities to work overseas.

In August and September I spent six weeks in Museum Victoria's Humanities Department helping to plan for the Centenary of World War I exhibition, which will be held at the museum in 2014. My main focus was on a collection of magazines named Aussie published for soldiers during and after WWI.

At the end of my placement I came away eager to contribute more, however small, and link up Melbourne Museum's WWI centenary commemorations with those that will happen in the Birmingham. I set out to find any connections between Australia and the University of Birmingham relating to WWI.

Australian and New Zealand soldiers came to Birmingham in 1914 to be treated at the University of Birmingham’s Great Hall, then called the 1st Southern General Hospital (and it is where I will be graduating next summer). Looking through the university’s collections, I came across an embroidered quilt that was produced by convalescing soldiers. Made up of nine panels, it includes an Australian panel depicting a crown with ‘Australian Commonwealth Military Forces’ written on a scroll underneath and a New Zealand panel featuring an intricate fern with ‘NZ’ over the top.

Australian Servicemen embroidery detail on Matron Kathleen Lloyd's linen cloth.
Source: BIRRC-H0013, Research & Cultural Collections, University of Birmingham

New Zealand Regiment embroidery detail embroidery detail on Matron Kathleen Lloyd's linen cloth.
Source: BIRRC-H0013, Research & Cultural Collections, University of Birmingham  

I also found photos at the Birmingham Archives and Heritage collections, with wounded soldiers from Australia and Scotland posing with nurses in the grounds of the hospital. Museum Victoria also holds many photographs taken and postcards purchased by soldiers from their time in England during WWI.

Australian soldiers with nurses at the 1st Southern General Hospital, now the University of Birmingham's Great Hall.
Source: UA10/i/4, Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham  

In addition, in the university’s collections there is an interesting article in The Mermaid magazine, entitled ‘A Trip to Gallipoli’ by Percival M. Chadwick. He was a Civil Engineering Lecturer at the University of Birmingham who left in 1915 to go and fight in Gallipoli for twelve months, only to return to Birmingham again to be treated at the university in the 1^st Southern General Hospital. He was attached to the New Zealand Engineers working with Australian and New Zealand Infantry and Cavalry regiments including a Maori contingent. He states:

The officers with whom I worked gave me a homely welcome, and I speedily felt quite at ease among them.

I could reiterate what Percival M. Chadwick said about Australians, about my colleagues at Melbourne Museum. It was a pleasure working there and one of the most enjoyable work experiences I have had. I very much look forward to seeing what Melbourne Museum puts on in its centenary exhibition in 2014 and I hope it is a success for everyone.

References:

Links:

University of Birmingham collections