Extracts from D'Arcy's Letters
10.10.1885
"....Additions to my Museum are numerous. Within the last week I have had a porpoise, two mongooses, a small shark, an eel 8ft long and 150 lb in weight, a young ostrich and two bagfulls of monkeys: all dead of course".
28.12.85
"I continue to get large numbers of beasts. Today a tapir came. I have some hopes of an accession of funds for my laboratory shortly which would enable me to improve very much".
30.12.85
"...There was another young lion waiting for me on my return, besides many other animals".
7.2.86
"I yesterday received a chimpanzee, one of the most man-like of the apes; it is the rarest and most valuable specimen I have yet had and it came like most of the others from Liverpool. One of the young doctors came and helped me to remove its brain at 11 o'clock at night. It was in beautiful condition. I shall be able to make a whole series of preparations besides cleaning the skeleton and stuffing the skin".
2.5.86
"The museum grows abundantly. Last week I had a lion-cub, a leopard, a vulture, a gazelle, and some others".
5.11.86
"Additions to the museum have not been quite so numerous of late. But last week I was made happy by the arrival of 9 little baby whales - the finest stock of whale embryos perhaps, that ever came under a naturalist's eye... I also got a baby Ornithorhynchus, a classical specimen. Prof Parker wrote a memoir on its skull, Prof Howes on its shoulder girdle, and now I am to do its pelvis. Today we got a small bear, and yet another pelican. We have put up a good lot of skeletons, and a great lot of small osteological specimens.
Last night John Sharp gave me £20 to buy second-hand glass cases at the Edinburgh International Exhibition. It won't go very far but it will do something".
9.11.86
There is nothing new since then. I have been working all day on the baby Ornithorhynchus, and it is more interesting almost than I expected. You have forgotten (but it doesn't matter) the long story I used to tell you all, about the homologies of the Marsupial bones with the pre-pubis of the fossil bird - like reptiles. Well, I think our baby proves that to be all true".
Quotations taken from D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, The Scholar-Naturalist by his daughter Ruth D'Arcy Thompson (Oxford University Press 1958)