What were they thinking? Tracing evolution in the Otago Museum, 1868–1936

ABSTRACT The first three curators at the Otago University Museum, Dunedin, NZ had much in common. They were zoologists, all evolutionists, all part-time curators (they held professorial posts in the University), all Englishmen, and all professed an Anglican faith, qualities that brought them unexpected conflict in the largely Presbyterian Scottish settler town. The men struggled to complete their time-constrained research in more-or-less isolation amongst unfamiliar and peculiar New Zealand fauna. Spanning the years 1873 when the first curator was appointed, to 1936 when the third retired, this paper sets their achievements against their individual evolutionary stances that subtly guided the layout in the museum.