On March 16th, 1689, Sir Hans Sloane left Jamaica and set sail for England onboard the frigate Assistance with the embalmed body of Christopher Monck, 2nd duke of Albemarle, the widowed Duchess, and over 800 specimens of plants, preserved birds and mammals, and a small menagerie of live animals including an enormous yellow snake, an iguana, and an alligator kept in a tub of salt water. Eighteen months before, Sloane had departed for Jamaica as the Duke’s personal physician. The voyage south had taken three months, and the Duke, notorious in England for his dissolute behaviour, died within ten months of setting foot on the island. Jamaica was well known by early travellers for its pestilent airs, excessive humidity and heat, and it was perhaps this paradisiacal tropical atmosphere, so different than the dank English climate, that did the Duke in. Perhaps it was his excessive fondness for drink. In any case, the Duke ailed and died. But Sloane had not only come to Jamaica to serve as physician. In Sloane’s own words, since his youth he had delighted in the study of plant and natural specimens and “had seen most of those Kinds of Curiosities, which were to be found either in the Fields, or in the Gardens or Cabinets of the Curious” in Europe, yet found the accounts of "Strange Things, which I met with in Collections, and, was inform'd, were common in the West-Indies, were not so satisfactory as I desired." To remedy this lack of detail, during his fifteenth month sojourn in Jamaica and the neighbouring islands, Sloane collected, preserved, sketched and documented every creature, plant, mineral, and soil he encountered.

A floating world crammed with the most extravagant and mysterious creatures and plants from the southern seas, the Assistance on its voyage home would have been a wonder-laden vessel for any curious naturalist in the seventeenth century. Most of Sloane’s plants would have been dried and pressed between sheets of paper. We can’t be sure exactly which creatures Sloane was able to transport home. Most likely he would have had jars of pickled lizards, birds, fish, eels, and small animals, perhaps been stored in large cases or arranged on shelves with small lips to prevent damage during high winds and storms. He would have dried the skins of lizards and chameleons and hung his stuffed creatures from the ceiling with strings to deter attack from insects and vermin. Rats were particularly abundant, an infestation that suited his seven foot yellow snake just fine, rats being “the most pleasing Food for these sort of Serpents.” While in Jamaica, he had dissected several yellow snakes, and not uncommonly had found thirteen or fourteen rats in their bellies.

It’s not clear how many living plants Sloane tried to bring back or how they faired on the voyage, but not one of his creatures survived. His “Guana”, which was let free to run about at will, was frightened by a seaman one day, leapt overboard and drowned. His snake, which had been tamed by a native to follow him everywhere “as a Dog would his Master,” escaped from its jar and was shot by the duchess’s footman. And on May 14th, his alligator which he had kept alive with scraps of “Guts and Garbage of Fowl, &c.,” finally died. “Thus I lost, by this time of the Voyage, all my live Creatures and so it happens to most People, who lose their strange live Animals for want of proper Air, Food, or Shelter.”

From the seventeenth centuries onwards, European naturalists and collectors amassed enormous amount of information and materials sent back from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Exotic birds, previously unknown animals and insects, and unfamiliar plants and fish flooded into the collections of eager and curious naturalists. Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) amassed one of the largest and most notable collections in Europe.  Amongst his many human artifacts and natural specimens, his vertebrate collections contained bits and pieces of birds, quadrapeds, fish, horns, eggs, and stones, bullets in elephant tusks. Both domestic and exotic, stange and beautiful curiosities from the far reaches of the globe were accumulated. His aim was establish a collection which would be of the most benefit to mankind, particularly in the areas of medicine, arts, and science.  At the time of his death, his collection is thought 1,563 fish, including a manatee, a unicorn’s horn, and some fossil, 907 birds and their parts, and 1903 quadrupeds and their parts.

As with most early natural history collections, the preservation methods of the items in Sir Hans Sloane’s museum fall into three categories: tanned skins, parts preserved in spirits, and stuffed items. A fourth category could be added encompassing all specimens not requiring any preservation, which would include horns, bones, teeth, beaks, claw, feathers, eggs, tuff and balls of hair, and calcitic deposits expelled or found inside human and animal bodies known as stones, bezoar stones, or snake stones. Among the more interesting stuffed items listed in Sloane's catalogue were listed as:

• The skin of the head & hock of the red headed crane from Bengall. given to me by Mr. Dubois. this crane lived in my garden for severall years, & died by swallowing a brass linked sleeve button.
• A smaller sort of Bustard from Moca in Arabia. It lived in my garden many years and ate flesh & other foods as it had done at Mitcham in Mr. Dubois' garden. who gave it me & had it brought over by one of the coffee ships.
• A piece of the lyons skin that dyed in the Tower in K. James' reign.
• Two cataracts taken out of the eyes of a blind small fox from Greenland. He lived many years wt me in my garden was brown in summer & turned white in winter. In April generally the fox shed the white hair unless [until] the last year of its life when being sick the white furr continued till its death not changing as usually.

The most complete account of Sir Hans Sloane's cabinet was written by Pehr Kalm in Swedish on his visit to England in 1748. It was translated into English in 1892 with the title, Kalm's Account of a Visit to England:

"In the morning I went ... up to Chelsea where we spent some time looking at Chelsea Garden, but afterwards went to see Sir Hans Sloan's collections, in all three Natural Kingdoms, Antiquities, Anatomy, and many Curiosities. We saw here a great collection of all kinds of stones, partly polished, partly such as still lay in their matrix as they are found in nature. We saw all sorts of vessels, Tea-cups, saucers, snuff-boxes, caskets, spoons, ladles, and other small instruments, all manufacturing out of agates and Jaspis, etc.; a number of different kinds of pearls, several learned men's Contrefaits, among which we particularly devoted ourselves to the study and admiration of the great botanist and student of natural history, John Ray ..

"A very large collection of insects from all parts of the world, all of which were now preserved in four-sided boxes, with clear glass glued on both over and under, so that one could see them quite well, but these boxes or cases were also so well stuck together and so tight that no worms of other injurious insects could get at them, and spoil them... Some of the East and West Indian Butterflies were far more showy than a peacock with its matchless variety of colours. A very large number of all kinds of corals, and other harder sea plants, a multitude of various sorts of crystals, several head-dresses of different races of men, musical instruments, etc. Various stuffed birds and fish, where the birds often stood fast on small bits of boards as naturally as if they still lived. Skeletons of various four-footed beasts, among which were particularly noticed that of a young elephant, the stuffed skin of a camel, and an Africa many-striped ass [a zebra]. Several human skeletons larger and smaller, the head and other parts of a frightfully large whale. This whale was said to have been 90 feet long. The length of its head bone was nearly 18 feet.

"Humming birds from the West Indies, which there made a show with their many colours, and set in their nests under glass as though they had been living; the bird's nest which they eat in Asia as any other food which they eat in the East Indies. It was white and looked almost as if it had been made of white wax. A great collection of snakes, lizards, fishes, birds, caterpillars, insects, small four-footed beasts, etc. all put in spiritu vini in bottles, and well preserved; dried skins of snakes from the East and West Indies, of many ells length and proportionately broad; very many tomes of a herbarium [a book of pressed dried plants], among which we particularly examined those which Sir Hans Sloane himself had collected in Jamaica; 336 volumes of dried plants in Royal foloio; on each leaf there were as many plants stuck on as there was room for. Sir Hans Sloane's library, which probably has few like it among private collections gathered together by one single man, and consists of somewhat more than 48,000 volumes, all bound in superb bindings.

"To described all this collection in detail, would fill several Folios: for any who has not himself seen this collection would probably have great difficulty in picturing to himself that it is so large. In another room were several of such books as consisted of coloured pictures of all sorts of Natural objects. Such as Meriana's, Catesby's, Seba's, Madame Blackwell's etc., costly works, Egyptian Mummies, Roman and other Antiquities, etc. ..."