WCP6085

Letter (WCP6085.7035)

[1]1

FROM

THE SECRETARY

UNIVERSITY MUSEUM

OXFORD

W. G. Wallace2, Esq[uire]

61, East-avenue [sic]

Bournemouth

May 4, 1945

Dear Mr Wallace,

The official thanks of the Pitt Rivers Museum3 for your donation of the Caribbean celt4 will by now, I imagine, have reached you, but I should like to add my own since the specimen falls within my personal interests.

Professor G. D. Hale Carpenter5, of the Hope Department of Zoology (Entomology)6 has asked me to say that he would be very pleased to accept the trapdoor spider’s7 nest, which will be useful for the public gallery. The Museum proper does not possess a library but Professor Carpenter has promised to search for one [of] the bookplates formerly used for the Hope Collection. If you have occasion to write to the Professor (who will acknowledge your donation direct) it might perhaps be well to refer to this.

Yours faithfully, | G. E. S. Turner8[signature]

Assistant Secretary

Spiders not sent May 13th 1946 [sic] 9

[2]

A very large trap-door spider’s nest from S[outh[]. Africa with spider. Given to V[iolet]. I[sabel]. W[allace].10,11

& N[orth] E[ast] of Hill near Ortiz N[ew] M[exico]. June 189812

King B[ird] of P[aradise]P[aradisaea]. Regia [sic] (Linn[eus])

Great......P[aradisaea]. apoda (Linn[eus])

Lesser......P[aradisaea]. papuaria (Linn[eus])

Standard Wing Semioptera wallacii

Red..P[aradisaea]. rubra13

1
The letter is typewritten and signed by the author in ink. The page is numbered [WP16/2/62] in pencil in the top RH corner.
2
Wallace, William Greenell (1871-1951) Electrical engineer, second son and third child of ARW.
3
A museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford, contiguous with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
4
A long, thin, prehistoric, stone tool similar to an adze, a hoe or axe-like tool.
5
Hale Carpenter, Geoffrey Douglas (1882-1953) British entomologist and physician. He worked in Uganda on tse-tse flies and sleeping sickness, where he developed an interest in mimicry in butterflies. He succeeded Edward Bagnall Poulton as Hope Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford 1933-1948.
6
The Hope Department of Zoology of the University of Oxford was established in 1860. In order to avoid any confusion with the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, the title 'Hope Department of Zoology' was modified to 'Hope Department of Zoology (Entomology)' in January 1934, to indicate the main work of the department. In 1978 it was integrated with the Department of Zoology. The Collections and Library remained in the University Museum and then came under the care of the Committee for the Scientific Collections with the title 'Hope Entomological Collections'.
7
Spiders of the family Ctenizidae, which construct burrows with a cork-like trapdoor made of soil, vegetation and silk. They live in warm places such as China, North America, South America, Africa and Japan.
8
Turner, Geoffrey E. S. (1910-1984) British ethnologist. He worked at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History for fifty years as secretary and as Honorary Assistant Curator (later Consultant) in North American Indian ethnology at the Pitt Rivers Museum (see Endnote 3).
9
Annotation in pencil in the hand of the author. The year should presumably be May 13th 1945, 9 days after that of the letter, not 1946.
10
Wallace, Violet Isabel (1869-1945) Daughter and second child of ARW, and sister of the recipient.
11
Annotation in ink in the hand of the recipient.
12
Annotation in pencil in the hand of the recipient, probably relates to a trapdoor spider’s nest.
13
A list of Bird of Paradise species written in pencil in the hand of the recipient. A connection with rest of the letter is not clear.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP6085.7035)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP6085,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 26 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP6085