Theatre: A defining moment for bioethics

30 century mineral collections considers private collections in Paris and focuses on issues of taste and aesthetics as elements in their valuation. Beretta provides a well-researched study of mineralogical traditions from the early modern collectors who classified minerals wholly on external characters, as was common with botanical and zoological collections, to those in the latter half of the eighteenth century who used chemical characters. Much of the chapter is devoted to Antoine Lavoisier, whose work was outside the old natural-history tradition and contributed to his complex theories on the history of the Earth. Janet Browne explores how collections may provide an entrée into a higher social group — the scientific community — and includes a particularly interesting account of how Darwin used his collections to break into academic circles and attain credibility. Ana Carneiro looks in considerable detail at the lively discussion between the Swedish anatomist and palaeobotanist Alfred Nathorst, the aristocratic Gaston de Saporta and the Portuguese geologist Nery Delgado on what are now thought to be fossil trilobite tracks. Carneiro’s thesis is that the interpretations of these objects by these three protagonists were influenced by their social and scientific backgrounds; this is interesting, but might well have been argued in rather less than 42 pages. From a natural historian’s viewpoint, these papers are far removed from the more familiar accounts of how collections, collectors and specimens contributed to our knowledge of the natural world, as they also address the largely unexplored subject of the how the collections affected their collectors, an avenue of research that would reward further work. This scholarly work comprises a collection of papers that were given at a conference entitled ‘From Private to Public’ held in Ravenna, Italy, in June 2004. It is made accessible by the palpable enthusiasm of the authors for their subject, and is well produced with many relevant illustrations. ■ Kathie Way is collection manager in the Division of Higher Invertebrates, the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK, and honorary curator of the zoological collections of the Linnean Society of London.