University Museum of Zoology, Downing Street, Cambridge
01223 336650 / www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/museum/events/
Open: weekdays, 10:00–16:45; Saturday, 11:00–16:00. Closed on Sunday
Admission Free
The University Museum of Zoology has been an archive for zoological specimens since the early part of the nineteenth century, when the University acquired the Harwood collection of comparative anatomy and the collections of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. It holds a number of specimens that Darwin collected and worked with, many of which are being displayed for the first time in a special exhibit located in the lower gallery of the Museum. Other Darwin specimens can be found among the main collections of the upper and lower galleries, highlighted with special labels.
You will find Galápagos finches brought back from the Beagle voyage, beautifully illustrating adaptive evolution, the octopus that Darwin described so vividly in his journal, and many of the fish collected on the Beagle voyage. After Darwin’s return, these fish were sent for identification to Leonard Jenyns, the Cambridge naturalist who had originally turned down the position on the Beagle. Jenyns, in turn, passed them on to the Museum for safekeeping, nicely illustrating how our collections grew. Other highlights of our exhibit are a selection of the microscope slides that Darwin prepared during the seven years that he spent working on barnacles and, perhaps most evocative of all, a box of insects that he collected as an undergraduate in Cambridge.
The exhibition was made possible by funding from the Designation Challenge Fund of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.