Another day, another museum. Perfect weather for it, as the capital was shrouded in dark, low clouds with a blustery wind ripping through the trees. Something indoors was called for, and the perfect answer was a trip to a little-known institution called the Horniman Museum, in the Forest Hill district of the city. Named after a Victorian tea magnate and Cornish MP, Frederick Horniman, it opened initially in 1901 as a place to store his many curios collected on foreign jaunts - but a complete modern redesign in 2002 means it would be unrecognisable if he suddenly re-appeared and asked to look round it. Sleek white galleries are split over four levels, each with a different theme (musical instruments, Native American culture, a small aquarium).
It was all interesting, albeit with a confusing layout and minimal signposting - stark featureless corridors and staircases suddenly threw you out at a display of Mummies, or a tank of jellyfish, or something. I kept passing groups of people with bemused expressions on their faces. It was whilst negotiating the passageways of the Horniman that I came up with the idea of writing about why I like Natural History museums so much. I can probably sum it up with a series of 'must-haves' that truly mark out the great NHM's of the world. Next time you find yourself at one of these establishments, see how it measures up against the list of ideal features...
Things in glass cases
The bread and butter of NHM's, musty moth-eaten stuffed animals in contorted poses are always popular. Large creatures like bears, walruses and so forth look immense at close quarters, and can be positioned in 'life-like' dioramas - a stiffly taxidermied cat poised to leap on a glassy-eyed rabbit, for example. Score extra points for yellowing fur, visible stitching.
Skeletons!
Dinosaurs are the other ever-present feature, but only the major museums have the big skeletons - like London's famous main hall Diplodocus or New York's giant T Rex. Look for real bones rather than dark plaster copies (which sadly the Diplodocus is). Every dinosaur display will also contain the following - a set of fossilised footprints, a model of a nest with Triceratops babies emerging from eggs, a primitive bird fossil looking like a crow flattened with a mallet. Many will also have a series of human/chimpy skeletons showing our evolution, and award bonus points (at your own discretion) for a human skeleton in a bizarre pose (I remember one riding a bike, and another on a skeletal horse).
Rocks and Minerals
This section will be as far away from the doors as possible - the dinosaurs are always the first thing inside the main entrance - which is definate proof that excitement decreases the further inside the NHM you go. The Royal Museum in Edinburgh has minerals on the fourth floor, and the Australian Museum in Sydney had room after room of minerals, rocks and gemstones with nobody in them. The nametags always try and make them sound exciting - "Spangletite deposit found by local farmer Bill Bumble after pulling prize-winning heifer from a bog with his tractor", but at the end of the day, they are just rocks.
Unused outdoor section
Museums are there for rainy days - when it's nice and warm, people will be doing other things. So why NHM's insist on creating outdoor areas of native trees and so-on, I have never understood. It's somewhere for the schoolkids to drop their litter, I guess. There will be donated benches "To the memory of Mrs Ada Tinkle, who loved this museum", some pathetic-looking tropical plants/cacti completely out of their natural enviroment, a water feature, and sculptures. Add extra points for pointlessly-odd looking statues, bonus points if they are phallic.
One crazy fact that can't be true
This involves reading the displays, I know, but every NHM will have something that you look at and think is complete b*llocks. I think they put these in deliberately. One of the stuffed polar bears will have a camera instead of an eye and museum operatives are checking to see who's really paying attention. At the Horniman I found out that the UK has over 5000 species of parasitic wasps, most (conveniently) smaller than a thumbnail. One survey of a normal suburban back garden in Leicester apparently found 600 different types. In one garden? And yet the only wasp anyone ever sees is the basic black and yellow picnic terror that causes grown men to run screaming (you know who you are). Where are the other 4999 types?
Spiders!
Just to show it's not only dead things you can have in NHM's, most will also have a token section of various insects, lizards and spiders. Good ones, like the O. Orkin Insect Zoo at the Smithsonian NHM in Washington DC, have all kinds of bugs and creepy-crawlies - but even the most basic will have a couple of bored looking tarantulas hiding under rocks inside sweaty tanks, probably with greasy hand prints on the glass.
Tuataras
Always a favourite, as I described in my post about the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, Tuataras are lizards that aren't. Belonging to an ancient evolutionary dead end of legged snakes, they look identical to lizards. It's this kind of obscure but (to some people) interesting thing that makes you appreciate the finer points of evolution and ecology. Or if not, it's cheap to get hold of a stuffed lizard. I've seen Tuataras at the NHM's in London, Washington, Dublin, Paris, Vienna, and at Te Papa in Wellington, New Zealand (the only country they naturally inhabit).
Giant Spider Crab
The king of all museum exhibits, a large crab glued to a board is for me diagnostic of a great NHM. Used to scare small children and indicate immediately how wacky things that live in the sea can be, it's another cheap-but-visually-striking display. Any NHM with one of these - and of course the bigger the better - is really a cut above the rest.
Horniman Museum website
Te Papa, Wellington
Natural History Museum, London
Natural History Museum, Vienna
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC
