Ironically, by the time that taxidermy had finally solved the problems of insect and pest attack in the early nineteenth century (with the widespread use of arsenic paste or powder), the practice had limited use for scientific inquiry. In his treatise on taxidermy published in 1840, the English naturalist William Swainson claimed that a knowledge of taxidermy was “absolutely essential” to every naturalist, since “without it, he cannot pursue his studies or preserve his own materials.” Yet, while the science of taxidermy – maintaining collections from decay and insects – was fundamental to the growth and continuum of collections, the artistic side of taxidermy – setting animals and birds in naturalistic poses – was not.

The typical display of birds in natural history museums consisted of rows of individually cased specimens. In contrast to uncased specimens or multiple specimens assembled in a single case, individually prepared and cased birds, each in its own hopefully air-tight case, would remain uncontaminated and free from insect attack even if its neighbour was ravaged or mouldered.

View of Sir Ashton Lever's (1729-1788) incredible museum.   

For Swainson, however, the arrangement of species each in their own cases had its disadvantages, and Swainson presents technical, economic, and methodological reasons for why “[t]he preservation of birds in skins, or, more properly, in an unmounted state, is, above all others, the best for scientific purposes.” First, mounted specimens were more often than not badly done: “it is, in fact, rare to see exotic birds, after they have come from the hands of the bird-stuffer, in a thoroughly perfect state.” Secondly, mounted specimens were expensive to prepare and took up too much room. Lastly and most importantly for the serious scientific inquirer, sealed cases were “unfavourable to a minute examination” and did not allow those characteristic “which are essential to [the specimen’s] scientific description” to be distinctly seen.

In contrast, skins “when laid upon fine cotton, and arranged in cabinet drawers, they have a very pleasing appearance; they can be at all times handled, and minutely examined, without the least trouble; moreover, they lay in such a compact space, that, in a cabinet 5 ¼ feet high, 3 feet 3 inches broad, and 1 foot 7 inches deep, containing 36 drawers, we have a collection of near 600 specimens." Where space allowed, Swainson recommended mounting birds on short, stout pegs and arranging them in large cases. Such an arrangement allowed birds to be easily removed and examined while many birds could be packed closely together.

image taken from the Smithsonian Museum's website http://www.si.edu/.  The image shows the museum's extensive holdings of bird skins, all neatly arranged by species in drawers.  Swainson would have swooned to see such beautiful order so beautifully presented.

Charles Darwin expressed a similar estimation of how to extract the most use from collections. In regards to the mammoth and cluttered collections at the British Museum, Darwin promoted the idea of saving the expense of stuffing and instead collecting the skins in drawers: “Rooms fitted up with thousands of drawers would cost but little.” In addition, more space could be given “to real workers, who could work all days” in rooms separated from the distraction and annoyance of the throngs of visitors streaming through the museum. For the general audience, Darwin advocated a judicious selection of specimen to form a “typical” or popular museum for the daily use of the public. The clearly labeled and well-spaced specimens “would be quite as amusing & far more instructive to the populace (& I think to naturalists) than the present enormous display of Birds & Mammals,” which Darwin considered not only a tremendously inefficient use of space but also exhibited “a sort of vanity in the Curators.”

For both Swainson and Darwin, then, artistic mounts where not inherently unscientific. Darwin remain convinced that artistic taxidermy was serviceable for the serious naturalist. At issue was rather the spatial requirements of large, mounted collections and the scientific requirement to, as Swainson endless repeats, “minutely examine” specimens.