Natural world
Find out more following the links in the navigation panel.
The zoology collection is the foundation collection of the Free Public Library and Museum, which was built between 1857 and 1860 by William Brown MP to house the city's museum collection. The 13th Earl of Derby, Edward Smith Stanley, founded the collection in 1851 with his bequest of 20,000 specimens, mainly of birds and mammals from his private museum and menagerie at Knowsley Hall near Liverpool.
The public displays of mounted zoology material during the Victorian era were greatly expanded in 1902-1906 when the Horseshoe Galleries on the upper floors of the adjacent Mountford Building were opened. Large collections of invertebrate material were also amassed during this period, but the bulk of it was destroyed in May 1941 during the blitz. Fortunately, the most important reference material of vertebrates had been evacuated prior to the fire. Serious damage had also occurred to the spirit preserved collections during the inter-war period, leading to the loss of most of the second most comprehensive collection of marine specimens from the Challenger expedition.
Since the war, vigorous efforts have been made to rebuild the collections, and they have now expanded to the point where there are believed to be more than 1.2 million specimens in the zoology collections. The curation of these large and diverse collections is listed in order of vertebrates, arachnids (spiders), entomology, and conchology.
Find out more following the links in the navigation panel.