GOING TO AMERICA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 139, 15 June 1932, Page 8

GOING TO AMERICA

RARE COLLECTION SOLD.

Behind the sale by Lord Rothschild to America of the unique collection of bird skins in his private museum at Tring, Hertfordshire, lies the tragedy of the death of a brilliant curator who could not be replaced, says the IDaily Mail The collection of more than 300,000 skins, more rare specimens than any other in the world, many of birds that are now extinct, is being packed for transit to the National History Museum in New York, where they will be housed as the Rothschild collection.

Lord Rothschild has spent 42 years, and has sent expeditions to almost every part of the world, to make the collection. “He cannot bear to see the collection going away,” Dr. Jordan, the rector of the museum, said to a Daily Mail reporter, 4 ‘but circumstances have compelled him to part with it. So rare are some of the specimens that it is not easy to find an ornithologist to look after them adequately. Two years ago Dr. Hartert, the director of the museum, retired, his brilliant assistant died last summer, and there was no one else to carry on.

“Then the American Museum of Natural History made Lord Rothschild a large offer for the bird skins. He had always planned to present them to the British Museum, but he saw in this offer an opportunity to carry on the rest of the museum with its mammals, butterflies, insects, and birds’ eggs. “Included in the collection are the only specimens in the world of the .ground pigeon from the Pacific island of Bougainville, in tho Solomons, which was exterminated by the introduction of the domestic cat.”