Pickled specimens and painted ceilings at the Natural History Museum

Miss T. had expressed an interest to visit London, to combine a foray into Oxford Street with a visit to a museum previously unknown to us, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/petrie). So we, the three remaining family members in Cambridge, set off this morning for the capital, by train from Cambridge, on the last day of sanity before the total mayhem surrounding the Royal Wedding tomorrow.

At King's Cross we separated as I was headed for the Natural History Museum. Laden with different recording technologies – trialled the audio recorder on the tube to gain travel noise, as well as the sounds surrounding the walk from South Kensington Tube station, through the tunnel to the Natural History Museum.


Emerging into the cold wind, the massed queues at the main entrance were visible, so, I entered through the lesser known and therefore queue-less Geological Museum entrance. My destination was the Darwin Centre on the far wing of the Natural History Museum. Having divested myself of equipment, coat etc., I was lucky enough to gain a last place of eight on the 11:45 Spirit Collection Tour.

Today's guide was biological researcher and science communicator at the NHM, Ms Jessica, who gave us an informative and interesting commentary as we descended into the depths of the Darwin Building. Today, the flesh eating beetles, as seen remotely on screen, were snacking on a killer whale tooth, roped into service for science in this instance, rather than romping destructively through the museums exhibits.

The NHM holds over 70 million specimens, many of them original species type reference examples. This is an incredible resource that promises to provide further centuries worth of novel research. The interesting aspect for me was the use of simple industrial methylated spirits (IMS - ethanol – methanol mixtures ) for samples stored in spirit. As a microscopist, the usual immediate preservation mixtures contain fixatives such as formalin (e.g. as in formol acetic acid -FAA for plant samples). However, from a DNA extraction perspective, the IMS has permitted recovery of functional DNA (for sequencing and analysis) from samples over a century old, according to our guide.

We passed the chilled rooms with banks of sample cabinets, kept below the flashpoint of alcohol, to the large sample room. Here I and the group were reacquainted with Archie, the female giant squid, the length of a London bus. It was also a thrill to see the Coelocanth, one of the first to provide real evidence that these living fossils still existed.

Of course, as a biologist, there was a special frisson to see some of the original samples collected by Charles Darwin during his trip on the Beagle; I've read the book, now I've seen some of the actual specimens!

I think this personal interaction between a museum scientist was the highlight of the visit as it brought the exhibits much more vividly to life. Even as a biologist, there is a limit to the excitement engendered by the static collections of pickled animals and plants in jars.

This positive feeling through interaction was repeated when I entered the Cocoon exhibition. The interior spiral path was very reminiscent of the Philips Evoloun Museum that used to exist near Eindhoven in The Netherlands.
But the innovative feature was the giant window into a working lab where a researcher was studying New Forest Blowflies. As visitors, we could see the specimens via a TV feed from the microscope and the researcher was actively talking about what she was doing and open to questions. The fact that blowflies could be used in forensic cases gave an immediate relevance, even for non-scientists.

Memories of DNA sequencing returned when seeing a later exhibit of eppendorfs with autoradiographs of sequencing gels. The initial trials with Maxam and Gilbert chemical sequencing; the gradual transition to Sanger dideoxynucleotide PCR based methods; the shift from using radiolabelled phosphate to the dye based systems. How in the mid eighties I was proud to sequence a few hundred bases of viral sequence, to then routine clone and sequence genes by the end of the nineties. Now, silica based methods allow genome sequencing in a matter of weeks.

On exiting the Cocoon, I chatted with another researcher, Ms Amy, who was specialising in science communication for her PhD and gathering data by interviewing visitors. It looks as if the NHM is again at the forefront of new approaches to communicating science effectively and accessibly for a public otherwise shunning the subject.

Retrieving my recording equipment, I tried taking a short video of the main hall with the old friend , the Diplodocus under Charles Darwin's thoughtful gaze. Then I turned my gaze upwards to the ceiling.

This was actually the result of an aside by Ms Jessica about the construction of the building and the hand-painted ceiling of the main hall with botanic motifs. As previously with Ely Cathedral, I attempted to photograph the ceiling panels in sections along the length of the hall. As ever, the column decorations caught my eye as the Victorian exuberant decoration meant that each aisle had different column designs.

Before I departed, I also took some photos of the Reeves commisioned botanical illustrations by Chinese artists and one or two of the modern examples – both to show Botanical illustrator, painter and friend Mrs Heather Maunders and as references relevant to my current Chinese Brush Painting course with artist Jane Evans.

The afternoon was then spent in reunion with the rest of the family at the Petrie Museum, where, on this first ever visit, I mainly recorded the pottery relative the different epochs. Something I will write upon when having evaluated the images.