The University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, is a magical and light-filled space where it is possible to see many of the specimens collected by the most famous naturalists of the 19th century. They range from specimens collected by Darwin on the Beagle voyage to a range of fossils and other specimens collected more recently. Behind the scenes of the museum, its archives contain thousands of original documents, which chart the development of fields as diverse as comparative anatomy and palaeontology from their beginnings and throw a light on the extraordinary personalities involved in forging these disciplines.
Among these treasures is a set of notebooks filled with the meticulous handwritten records made by the Reverend Leonard Jenyns, Vicar of Swaffham Bulbeck, between 1827-1849. In them he describes many of the species that occurred in Cambridgeshire during the mid-19th century.
One of these notebooks, which he gave to the museum in 1869, includes an entry about an eel-like fish called a Burbot. Writing in beautiful copperplate, Jenyns noted that the Burbot was: “Common in the Cam, and in the navigable cuts communicating with that river. In Reche Lode they are frequently taken, & sometimes attain to a considerable size, reaching the length of nearly two feet, and the weight of between three or four pounds.”
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Image: Original manuscript of Fauna Cantabrigiensis
Credit: The Ray Society
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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