WCP6086

Letter (WCP6086.7036)

[1]1

FROM

THE SECRETARY

UNIVERSITY MUSEUM

OXFORD

December 5, 1946

W. G. Wallace, Esq[uire]

61, East Avenue

Bournemouth

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your very kind offer to present to the Museum2 your collection of eoliths3 and examples of flint-knapping4 by Benjamin Harrison5. Mr T. K. Penniman6, the Curator of the Pitt-Rivers Museum7, which is our ethnological and archaeological department, would be most happy to accept your specimens for the collections under his care. They may be addressed either to me or directly to Mr Penniman.

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

Assistant Secretary

Wrote Dec[ember]. 7th to post on 9th (Monday) Two boxes of Harrison’s flints & several letters re same8.

1

The letter is typewritten and signed in ink by the author. The page is numbered [WP16/2/63] in pencil in the top RH corner.

2.

2
Founded in 1860 as the centre for scientific study at the University of Oxford, the Museum of Natural History holds the University’s internationally significant collections of geological and zoological specimens.
3
From Gk. "eos", dawn, and "lithos", stone, a chipped flint nodule. Once thought to have been the earliest stone tools, they are now believed to be naturally produced by geological processes such as glaciation.
4
Knapping is the shaping of flint or other fracturing stones to manufacture stone tools by a pressure-flaking process, using hand-tools.
5
Harrison, Benjamin (1837-1921) an amateur naturalist and archaeologist, collector of the first eoliths in Kent in 1885.
6
Penniman, Thomas Kenneth (1895-1977) American-born naturalised British anthropologist. He was Director (or Curator as it was then known) of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford (see Endnote 8) 1939-1963.
7

A museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford. The museum is contiguous with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (see Endnote 3).

9.

8
Annotation in pencil by recipient across bottom LH corner of the page.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP6086.7036)]

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 “WCP6086,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 1 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP6086