Tring

Tring is a small town in Hertfordshire, England. It's about 30 miles northwest of London, or about 45 minutes by train. If you take the train be prepared to wait a long time for the bus into town or just walk the 2 miles. I walked, I saw trees, fields, houses, and the usual stuff one sees in England, nothing remarkable or even picture worthy.

Grass Car, London 2010

Not even the grass car in the above picture. I saw this in London a few days ago so I thought I would throw it into the blog just in case anyone missed it on Facebook. It has nothing whatsoever to do with this blog except that I didn't see it in Tring.

St. Peter and St. Paul, Tring

The local old church was beautiful in that really old sort of way, but one comes to expect every town in England to have a really old beautiful church. So why did I visit this homely little town. It turns out that a very famous American's grandfather lived in this town at least for a few years, Lawrence Washington, yep George's granddad. Well, being the great American that I am, I had to visit.

The Natural History Museum at Tring

Actually, I came to visit this place. I didn't know about Lawrence until I read it on wikipedia. This is the Natural History Museum at Tring. It's been a part of the NHM since 1937.




The Rothschilds' built this place to house their oldest son's hobby. Walter (the oldest son) was a collector, some say he was obsessed, some say he was just a little eccentric. I think he was an obsessed eccentric with really great parents.




If my parents are reading this, I'm not trying to say that you were in anyway terrible parents, maybe just a little stingy with the money, that's all. I mean how much could something like this cost anyway.



Below is a picture of Lord Rothschild. I borrowed this picture and most of the facts for this post from the NHM or Wikipedia websites. Please visit them as they covered his life in much more detail than I could.

Lord Walter Rothschild

Rothschild with his famed zebra (Equus burchelli) carriage, which he drove to Buckingham Palace to demonstrate the tame character of Zebras to the public

Apparently at the age of seven Walter announced to his family that he was going to own a museum. He started collecting at seven and never stopped. He amassed the largest private zoological collection in history. At it's peak, his collection included 300,000 bird skins, 200,000 birds' eggs, 2,250,000 butterflies, and 30,000 beetles, as well as thousands of specimens of mammals, reptiles, and fishes. Apparently he had to sell off most his bird collection to the American Museum of Natural History as one of his mistresses was blackmailing him.

Fennec Fox, NHM at Tring

Now I'm thinking that this little guy hopes that the Night at the Museum movie series is true and he is able to run and hide every once in a while. I'm not sure what the heads (below) would do as they can't be terribly mobile.




Did I tell you that Lord Rothschild is the main reason that I am in London today. Walter inherited the majority of his parents fortune and also his father's title of Baron. He used this money to send expeditions to the far reaches of the world to collect animals of all sorts. I would estimate that at least 85% of the moth specimens I am working on came from these expeditions.



He also hired numerous people to identify all the critters. Remember now that these animals were all collected around the early 1900's. At that time all the insects from the nether regions of the world were new to science so he employed numerous people to identify these specimens. Some species were named several times as each identifier recognised it as new. So that's why I'm here, to help sort all those names out.



This is only a small selection of the animals on display. He even has a whole row of cases dedicated to the domestic dog. If you ever get a chance, and you enjoy looking at zoological stuff, Tring is a must stop.

Location:High St,Tring,United Kingdom

NHM Part Two

The blog experiment seemed to work so here are a few more pics. Oh by the way, I did have to do some editing on the pc. The pics just weren't sized right but the edits took all of five minutes to finish.

Alright back to the dinosaurs. That's the Camarasaur again just from down below. Now were going back up the staircase to the upper walkway again to pick up where we left off. It really was a brilliant idea to let people walk along at eye level with these skeletons.

Camarasaurus

This of course is an Albertosaur, relative of Mr. and Mrs. Rex although they probably didn't socialize all that much. If you look close at the teeth in these last two pics you can see one is (oops that should be was) a meat eater and the other just munched a little bit on plants.

Albertosaurus

Tuojianosaurus

This little dude is a stegosaur. But of course not just any stegosaur. This is Tuojianosaurus, the first stegosaur discovered from China. Apparently those upright plates on the back were supposed to help with defense. Something about discouraging meat eaters. Hmmm, do you really think an Albertosaur thinks all that much, ever, I mean especially about the size of a stegosaurs plates. He or she is going to rush in and try to kill it and then eat it if it succeeds. Dino, avoid them plates, they nasty (That's not really my idea of how a dinosaur might talk even if it could).
I guess I don't really have any ideas for what they were really used for, probably just used to impress the ladies or ladies impressing the men. Feel free to leave your ideas in the comment section. Now where was I, oh yeah dinosaurs.

Dromaeosaurs

These little guys have got to be what the velociraptors from Jurassic Park were based on. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway the two on the right have fed recently as they are quite active and I must say they look a bit better than the skinny guys next to them. They are called Dromaeosaurus and apparently liked to hunt in packs.
Ok time for the coolest dinosaur of all.

Tyrannosaurus (animated)

No not him and no it's not me either. It's this.

Deinocheirus (the arms are 2.5 meters long)

Ok it's just the claws, arms, and shoulders of some creature which has never actually been found. There is a skeleton out there some where that is missing a few parts. This thing had to be really cool, I'm thinking even way cooler than most Scooby-do monsters. Alright maybe I went too far with that one. Please send drawings of what you think this creature might have looked like. I promise to include the ones that are good in a future post.

Location:Air St,London,United Kingdom

Natural History Museum

Hi All,

I am bringing back the blog. At least I'm going to try. I'm trying to do it using the iPad. You would think this would be somewhat simple, but I'm afraid the software just isn't there yet. Either it's that or I'm somewhat deficient using it. Maybe a little bit of both. Anyway here it goes, wish me luck.

This might be a little different than before mostly because I am limited in time and resources. I'm using blogpress to write the posts. It works great up until the save option appears, that's when things can go really bad. Sometimes it just quits, no reason it just turns off and goes back to the main screen. Not much of a problem except that none of your changes have actually been saved. So retyping gets really old, really fast. Save more often is my new motto and copy your new work before you try doing anything.

So, I'm back in London again, still working on the moth project through the Smithsonian and The Natural History Museum. I figured that the best way to start the blog up again was by visiting the museum I'm actually working at. So I became a tourist for a few hours and here a few of the things I saw.

The NHM has a fantastic dinosaur collection. The lines to get in this area tend to be huge but also tend to move along pretty fast. So don't worry you will probably get in to see the dinosaurs in under an hour.

All the people on the left are waiting to get in to see the dinos. Here are a couple of my favorites.

This is the Camarasaurus. No I am not going to make fun of it's name. I would if it was spelled Camerasaurus because one doesn't pass on something like that. But anyway this is the huge skeleton that you see when you first walk into the dino area.

That's all for now. Have to publish this and see if it works. If it does I'll continue with more dinosaurs later.

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Gloucester Rd,Kensington,United Kingdom