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The Macleay Museum in Sydney has been a preserver of natural history and anthropology since its inception in the 18th century. The museum stores a huge collection of insects and also materials gathered from the aboriginal community of Australia and other countries on the Pacific. The collection housed here is so varied that it ranks next to the Australian Museum in its value and variety. The museum, as it stands today, is a fruit of the Macleay family who had been housing one of the world’s largest collections of insects. The collection had begun in the hands of Alexander Macleay whose son William Sharp Macleay was the one to expand the collection to its present shape. The collection of William Sharp Macleay, after whom the museum is named, had been donated to the University of Sydney in 1887 and remains till date in the university campus. The original collection has been stretched further to include several branches of science. The collection on the Macleay Museum today encompasses the large area in natural history, ethnography and entomology. Collections of Macleay Museum:
The collection of Macleay Museum includes- Scientific instruments collection: The museum has a store of above 10,000 scientific instruments that include microscopes, chemical and electrical apparatus, navigation and meteorological equipments, etc. Invertebrates Collection: The insect collection of the museum is one of the largest and oldest in Australia. With specimens that have been gathered from 1756, the collection of invertebrates today amounts to more than half million insects. Historic photographs: The museum stores about 50,000 valuable photographs that have been accumulated over decades. Vertebrates: The vertebrate collection stores a variety of animals, birds and reptiles that include some exclusively Australian species as well. Ethnography: The ethnographic collection of the Macleay Museum has almost 6000 items collected from the ethnographic sections of the Pacific nations.
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