Dry Storeroom No. 1: Summary and book reviews of Dry Storeroom No. 1 by Richard Fortey, plus links to an excerpt from Dry Storeroom No. 1 and a biography of Richard Fortey.
Dry Storeroom No. 1 The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
by Richard Fortey
Hardcover: Aug 2008,
352 pages.
Paperback: Sep 2009,
352 pages.
Richard Fortey - one of the world's most gifted natural scientists and acclaimed author of Life, Trilobite and Earth - describes this splendid new book as a museum of the mind. But it is, as well, a perfect behind-the-scenes guide to a legendary place. Within its pages, London's Natural History Museum, a home of treasures - plants from the voyage of Captain Cook, barnacles to which Charles Darwin devoted years of study, hidden accursed jewels - pulses with life and miraculous surprises. In an elegant and illuminating narrative, Fortey acquaints the reader with the extraordinary people, meticulous research and driving passions that helped to create the timeless experiences of wonder that fill the museum. And with the museum's hallways and collection rooms providing a dazzling framework, Fortey offers an often eye-opening social history of the scientific accomplishments of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Fortey’s scholarship dances with wit. Here is a book that is utterly entertaining from its first page to its last.
Fortey's passion for stewardship is convincing and comes across clearly in the way that the book's content and style mirror each other. This is not a fast-paced book to absorb in one sitting but its meticulous descriptions will please the reader who is sharply attuned to every turn of phrase. While at first glance Dry Storeroom No. 1 would appear to be of interest only to a niche audience interested in the nuances of taxonomy and other somewhat rarefied subjects, Fortey's ability to meld science and autobiography with an essayist's skill has created a book rich with trivia and anecdotes that has much to offer the casual reader. If the language is occasionally burdened by an excess of crystalline details, patience is rewarded in this tribute to the simultaneously timeless and mutable world. (Reviewed by Karen Rigby).
Library Journal
Highly recommended for all collections and required for natural history and history of science collections.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. A thoroughly delightful behind-the-scenes look at one of the world's greatest natural history museums.
Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. Visitors to the venerable building in South Kensington will probably get more from Fortey's lively, learned portrait than from any official guidebook.
Financial Times (UK)
In this loving survey of his life at the museum, Fortey. . . is never less than enthused by all the museum's collections.
Sunday Telegraph
Engaging. . . .Fortey's writing is enough to make the behind-the-scenes work of the museum totally fascinating. . . . (his) delightful book, like the museum it describes, is both rambling and elegant.
Sunday Times
Fortey. . . in his affectionate portrayal of the institution in which he spent his working life. . . sneaks us behind the scenes with all the glee of a small child seeing for the first time the museum's iconic Diplodocus skeleton . . .always authoritative. . . the beauty of the book is that - just like a museum - you can visit the different sections in any order you choose, lingering in the places that most take your fancy. . . and there is plenty of solid science to enjoy, elucidated with brilliant flair.
Entomology is the scientific study of insects. Defining characteristics
of insects are: three main body parts (head, thorax and abdomen), an
exoskeleton and no more than 6 legs in their adult form.
"The geneticist J.B.S. Haldane remarked, when questioned by a cleric
about the putative properties of God, that one sure characteristic of the
Almighty would be "an inordinate fondness for beetles". Of the 1.3 million known species, about two-thirds are insects and one-fifth are beetles.
"There are an estimated twenty-eight million insect specimens in the
Natural History Museum, including about a quarter of a million type
specimens." (A type specimen being the definitive example of a species
against which other specimens are compared).
A popular beetle amongst biologists is the
Dermestid beetle, which is used to clean skeletons. They are
especially useful on...
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