The Harvard Museum of Natural History

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is one of several museums located on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is a large rambling museum with specimens drawn from the University’s three natural history research museums: the Harvard University Herbaria, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and the Harvard Mineralogical Museum. It was only established in 1998, but it is the work of many years (the mineral collection, for example, was begun in 1784!).

“The snails seen here represent variation in one species – the Florida Tree Snail, *Liguus fasciatus*. These colorful mollusks live in the tropical hardwood hammocks of the Florida Keys and southern part of the Everglades where they feed on the lichen, fungi and algae growing on tree bark. These hammocks often exist as ‘islands’ separated by treeless wetlands, each of which has a distinctly different resident population of *Liguus fasciatus*.”

While visiting this museum I think I finally pinpointed why I’m not excited about natural history museums. They are just all over the place – you’ve got a dinosaur skeleton over here, a gemstone over there, a display on evolution this way, and some taxidermied giraffes down the hall. Oh, and let’s not forget the interactive displays that don’t work.

It’s too scattered, but also too much the same: every natural history museum seems the same as the one before it. I also feel squeamish seeing the taxidermied animals – I feel like they were killed neatly so that I could look at them, and I don’t like it. For the purposes of this post, I just decided to focus on “all the pretty things.”

The Harvard museum does have some unique items in their Blaschka Glass Flowers (which of course I did a separate post on), and the related Blaschka Glass Marine Invertebrates pictured below.

The cover photo was simply labeled as a butterfly.

Green Peafowl. As much as I dislike looking at taxidermied birds, I have to admit being able to get a good, solid look at these spectacular feathers is an experience.

Resplendent Quetzal. I love the name! This bird’s tail went on and on – too much to capture in one from with the reflective glass. How about that head styling, tho?!

We previously posted about the Blaschka Glass Flowers Exhibit at the museum, but we were surprised to find another room with another amazing display. This one was focused on marine invertebrates, and they were just as incredible. It’s really hard to look at them and remember they are made of glass, and that they are 100+ years old.

You can read the story about the Blaschka Glass on our other post.