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COLLECTING FOR LORD ROTHSCHILD (1897-1898)

The lifelong collecting zeal of Lionel Walter, second Baron Rothschild (1868-1937), resulted in the largest zoological collection ever amassed by an individual. In 1892, he opened a museum to the public at the family property in Tring, England. The Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum has been part of the Natural History Museum since 1937.

While traveling over the Sierras towards Lake Tahoe in 1897, Beck received an invitation to join a Rothschild-financed expedition to the Galapagos Islands. The Webster-Harris Expedition was plagued by disease, but introduced Beck to oceanic birds.

The expedition returned to San Francisco in 1898 with over 3,000 bird skins and tortoises. In 1900, Beck was again recruited to collect for Rothschild, and personally took those specimens to England.

Most of the bird skins in Rothschild's collection were sold to the American Museum of Natural History in 1932, after he was forced to raise cash to pay off a long-standing blackmail demand.

A Galapagos tortoise (Testudo vicina) from the New York Zoological Park.
From The Galapagos Tortoises in their Relationship to the Whaling Industry
by Charles Haskins Townsend, originally in Zoologica Vol. IV, No. 3, 1925.
Read a literature review of "Rothschild and Hartert's 'Review of the Ornithology of the Galapagos Islands'" in an online version of Auk: 17(3): July-September 1900.
Read Clinton G. Abbott's article, "Closing History of the Guadalupe Caracara," in an online version of The Condor: 35(1): January-February 1933: 10-14, available at SORA.
Read a digital edition from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries of Walter Rothschild's The Avifauna of Laysan and the Neighbouring Islands with a Complete History to Date of the Birds of the Hawaiian Possession.
See Mary LeCroy's Type Specimens of Birds in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) for a detailed explanation of birds from Rothschild's collection that were sold to the AMNH.

COLLECTING FOR LORD ROTHSCHILD (1897-1898)

Exhibit Home | The Early California Years (1870-1896)
Collecting for Lord Rothschild (1897-1898) | Monterey Bay Collecting (1903-1910)
Academy Galapagos Expedition (1905-1906) | Collecting for Bent in Alaska (1911-1912)
Brewster-Sanford Expedition (1912-1917) | Whitney South Seas Expedition (1920-1929)
Back Home in Planada (1930-1950) | Bird Specimens at the PGMNH
Artifacts | Map of Beck's World Travels | Exhibit Credits | Links

Page created April 28, 2006. Last updated May 3, 2006.
Page copyright 2006 by the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.