Correspondence between the British Museum (Natural History) and Sheffield Airey Neave regarding delegates to the Conference on Nature Preservation in Post-War Reconstruction, and a meeting of the Council

Report on the status and operation of the British Museum (Natural History), and damage suffered as a result of enemy action

Report of a meeting between the Trustees of the British Museum and the representatives of the Museum Conference of Naturalists, with correspondence, a memorandum on the problem of combining the administrative and technical or scientific direction of National Museums with special reference to the British Museum (Natural History) and papers from meetings

Letters from Carl Jacob Sundevall, Director of the Royal Museum Stockholm, to Philip Lutley Sclater regarding specimens found in the Museum such as Galapagos birds

Letter from William Henry Sykes to Philip Lutley Sclater regarding the Indian Museum

Letter from Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas of the British Museum (Natural History) to Philip Lutley Sclater regarding the skin of a giraffe

Letters from Jules Verreaux of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, to Philip Lutley Sclater

Lists specimens sent to the Natural History Museum

List of specimens held

It was proposed in the setting up of ZSL that there would be a museum for zoological specimens, and items began being collected c.1827 including a collection of Sumatran specimens donated by Lady Sophia Raffles, widow of ZSL founder Sir Stamford Raffles. The museum was housed firstly within our office building at 33 Bruton Street in central London, and charged entry for people to visit. Many specimens were donated by fellows, John Gould donated his collection of Himalayan birds in 1831 to the museum, for example. The museum proved very popular, and grew at such a rate that it was one of the reasons for moving office to Leicester square. It was decided that the Society either needed to purchase a dedicated building for it - or to disperse the collection. ZSL Council chose the latter, and by 1855 the collection had been dispersed to various other collections including the British Museum (Natural History) and Norwich Museum.