Notes from the North 4 2024

Edinburgh Science, founded in 1989, is the educational charity responsible for the Edinburgh Science Festival. This year was the thirty-fifth time the festival has been held, a fortnight of displays, lectures and activities organised to coincide with the school Easter holidays. In 1989 it was the first-ever large-scale public celebration of science and it remains to this day one of the biggest festivals of its kind in Europe. It is without doubt one of Edinburgh’s great successes, and should arguably be as big as the globally-renowned International Festival. But it isn’t, far from it, and perhaps part of the reason for that is a nervousness, even a negativity, in the general population about ‘Science’ in general, a feeling that, unlike the Arts, it is too difficult or too inaccessible. The festival does an excellent job of dispelling those fears by providing all sorts of ways for people to play and learn. 

The hunt is on at the national Museum. of Scotland

The title of this year’s festival was ‘Shaping the Future’ which feels like a much more positive concept to dwell on than the constant reminders we get in the media of how bad everything already is and how it is only likely to get worse. In keeping with the theme there was strong emphasis on biologically-derived materials and how they can be developed/used to combat our plundering of the natural world’s resources. Venues for the festival included the City Arts Centre, the Pleasance, Edinburgh Zoo, the Royal Botanic Garden and of course, the National Museum of Scotland. 


The history of how the National Museum of Scotland came to be what it is today and the critical early role played by enthusiastic amateurs is as fascinating as the treasures of the present-day museum itself. It came into being in 1697 simply as a collection of natural history exhibits gathered by Robert Sibbald and his cousin Andrew Balfour. (As a post-Brexit aside it is worth noting that after Sibbald and Balfour received their early education in Scotland both went on to study in Europe, Sibbald in Leiden, Paris and Angers, Balfour in Paris and Caen. They are two great but relatively unsung heroes of Scotland. Not only did they make a start on the museum, they were also responsible for the founding of Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens.) 

 


Robert Sibbald

By the early 19th century travellers abroad were being encouraged to donate their finds and half of everything the Royal Naval survey ships brought back from their expeditions was being sent to the museum (the other half went to London). Charles Darwin was briefly a pupil of the museum’s taxidermist, John Edmonstone. 

 

John Edmonstone’s is also a fascinating story. He was born into slavery in British Guiana where he was taught taxidermy by Charles Waterton, a naturalist from Yorkshire, while Waterton was on a visit to the plantation. Edmonstone came to Scotland in 1817, initially to work as a servant on the estate of the family he was named after at Cardross Park. However he was soon made a free man and he moved to Glasgow, then Edinburgh where he set up shop as a ‘bird-stuffer’. It was while he worked there that he taught Charles Darwin the art of taxidermy, and particularly how to preserve birds quickly in hot climates before decomposition set in. 

John Edmonstone


 

The last day of this year’s Science Festival was also the last day of the museum’s Rising Tide exhibition which focused on the impact of plastic pollution and rising sea levels on Australia and the Pacific Islands. Artefacts on display included woven baskets made from plastic construction strapping collected from beaches in Guam and an installation by George Nuku, Bottled Ocean 2123 which imagined the state of the oceans 100 years from now – an immersive landscape made out of single-use plastic bottles. 

George Nuku putting the final touches to his installation

N.B. The global theme for Earth Day on 22 April this year is Planet versus Plastic –  www.earthday.org tells you how to ‘get involved’ as we say these days.  

 

You may have missed both the Science Festival and Rising Tide but there is still time to see the exhibition, Life on the Edge, Wild Life Photographer of the Year. It is on at the museum in Edinburgh until 6th May and the website of the Natural History Museum in London lists other venues where you can see it, both in the UK and abroad. Here are a few images from children as young as 10 to professional photographers who spend their whole lives waiting to capture that elusive ‘ultimate image’.

building a nest, stone by stone

night-flight

Horseshoe crabs have 2 compound eyes, one either side of their shell. They also have 7 simpler eyes, 5 on the surface of the shell and 2 underneath by the mouth.

And here, finally is a short extract from Jeremy Jacob Peretz’ Golden Shovel #2: John Edmonston(e), or "Darwin's negro bird-stuffer" published in the Winter 2019 edition of the African American Review:

‘…Examining mollusk, beak, and bee

On islands far from his own with a greedy

Eye to observe, collect, categorize, and a

Knack for preserving those dead bird

Specimens packing his Beagle in

Voyages keeping every hand 

Busy. He dislikes medicine, which is 

Why he spent hours at the museum worth

More than he could know then, more

Than we are taught now, more than

Taxidermy. Perhaps he learned—us two

Men setting together at work stuffing-in

Conversation—about life, joys, ills, mysteries: the

Stuff of slaves, scientists, of biology, and bush.’

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Notes from the North 6 2025

Image
It’s the last Saturday in June. There is a warm wind blowing strongly through Edinburgh. Tourists and locals are sprawled out on the dry grass in Princes Street Gardens and I am with them. I am waiting to go to the opening of the exhibition celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Talbot Rice Gallery.  one of the Shawky glass marionettes Across the grass I can hear the voice of a woman speaking to a crowd which has gathered in the square outside the National Gallery. She and they are protesting the occupation, starvation and killings in Palestine. I have been out on other Saturdays lately and seen similar actions: outside St Giles Cathedral (a collection and a choir singing), outside Barclays bank (‘blood bank’ and other slogans chalked in big capitals on the pavement). I wonder how these signs of dissent and anger will be handled if the government persists in its decision to designate Palestine Action a terrorist organisation. For the moment their documentary To Kill a War Mac...
Read more

Notes from the North 7 2025

Image
  Less than two weeks ago I looked out from my sitting room window and saw plumes of thick smoke rising over Arthur’s Seat. After weeks of no rain the flames were rampaging across bone-dry gorse and grass. This was not the first time the hill has gone on fire but it jerked Edinburgh out of its usual complacency and reminded us all that Scotland, reputedly the land of rain, mist and lochs, does burn too.       Flames and floods are what we are learning to expect everywhere, as the planet responds to centuries of human destruction and warfare.     The Festival is in its last days. The crowds show no sign of thinning but the temperatures are lower and there is more than a hint of autumn in the bright red of the rowan berries and hips. Here at home I have emptied my potato bags, picked the last of my small crop of beans and peas and am now out along the back lanes getting blackberries to make bramble jelly.    The theme of the Festival has been...
Read more

Notes from the North 4 2025

Image
April marks the start of the bowling season. From my kitchen window l can watch the man with the mower pushing backwards and forwards across the turf almost every day, leaving perfectly straight green lines behind him. His efforts result in a lawn so smooth and firm that you could as easily play marbles on it. It’s the bowling green equivalent of a number 2 haircut at the barber’s.   In the Meadows, all along Princes Street, in the Botanics, in other public parks and countless private gardens there is an explosion of cherry blossom, showers of pink petals floating to the ground at the slightest breath of wind. I stop on my way back from town, first to listen to and then record the song of a thrush, a rarity these days, out of sight in one of the trees near the Parliament. Then one morning I find lots of tiny feathers scattered across the grass in my little back garden. It looks like the local sparrow-hawk has made off with an unlucky bluetit. And when a day later I’m on a bus throu...
Read more