Thursday 10 May 2012

Bradford on Avon fossils

The image above shows a wooden card holding invertebrate fossil specimens collected by Etheldred Benett, including some she found at Bradford-upon Avon. Miss Benett, often referred to as the world’s first female earth scientist, was never a member of the Academy, but it acquired some of her collection after her death in 1845.
The image is from 'A Passion for Nature'; a selection of photographs from the book "A Glorious Enterprise: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Making of American Science." The image is seventh in the slide show.

Response from the former curator of the Bristol collections:-
The Ethedred Benett specimens came to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences as the result of a buying trip by Dr Thomas Bellerby Wilson in 1845, in the course of which Henry Rome Stutchbury, temporary Curator,  sold him some of the Bristol Institution's "duplicates", including some from Benett, Samuel Worsley of Bristol and the Rev John Skinner of Camerton (Coal Measures plants from Camerton Colliery). Benett had given the Institution some specimens of Apiocrinites rotundus in 1841 and it already possessed plenty of specimens from other people, such as J.S. Miller and from Bradford on Avon surgeon  William Fifield Adye (a good collection purchased in 1829).
Wilson donated his purchases to the Academy two years later, presumably when he returned to America.

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