Catalogue description British Museum (Natural History): Department of Zoology: Fish Section: Correspondence

This record is held by Natural History Museum Library and Archives

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Details of DF 233
Reference: DF 233
Title: British Museum (Natural History): Department of Zoology: Fish Section: Correspondence
Description:

The series consists of the correspondence of successive heads of the Fish Section of the Museum. Letters are concerned with the presentation, purchase and exchange of specimens, with the enquiries of professional zoologists and members of the public, and with the research projects of Museum staff. Letters come from institutions and individuals all over the world, including The Indian Museum, Calcutta, The American Museum of Natural History, New York, and the editorial office of The Fishing Gazette, London. Along with the letters there are a sketches, diagrams, newspaper cuttings, photographs, scales and dried fish skin.

Series held at The Natural History Museum are catalogued more fully in its online catalogue (reference DF ZOO/233). Online descriptions of some individual records can also be viewed on Discovery, see DF 233.

Date: 1908-1934
Held by: Natural History Museum Library and Archives, not available at The National Archives
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 20 boxes and files
Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated
Immediate source of acquisition:

DF 233/1-2 were transferred to the archives in 1990, the remainder in 1995.
Custodial history: Boulenger's letters on reptiles, amphibians and fish were kept together in the Reptile Section until the fish letters in DF 233/3-5 were removed in about 1970.
Administrative / biographical background:

Fish were curated within the 'Reptiles, Amphibians and Fish Section' with George Albert Boulenger (1858-1937) as Head of Section from 1881. Although Boulenger's main achievements were with the reptiles, he published extensively on the freshwater fish of Africa, and retained responsibility for this group until his resignation in 1920. Charles Tate Regan (1878-1943), who had studied zoology at Cambridge under Adam Sedgwick, joined the Museum in 1901 and worked on fish under Boulenger until he was given charge of the separate Fish Section about 1913. He was particularly interested in geographical distribution, higher classification and phylogeny of fish. John Roxborough Norman (1898-1944) joined the Museum from Imperial College, London, in 1921, and took over responsibility for the Section on Tate Regan's appointment as Keeper of Zoology. He worked on fish collected on the 'Discovery', 'Antarctica', John Murray and Cambridge Suez Canal expeditions, and was responsible for a complete reorganisation of the Fish Gallery which was completed in 1936. At the same time he was reorganising the spirit collection from its original Gunther-order to an order devised by Tate Regan. Norman was transferred to Tring as Officer in Charge in 1939.

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