I read about Peale's, Scudder's, and Drake's museums in the SAT annual reports and also in Charles Coleman Sellers's Mr. Peale's Museum. I also visited the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, site of the original museum.
I read about the Victorian mania for natural history and the state of science museums in the pre- and post-Darwin era in Lynn Barber's The Heyday of Natural History. This, combined with the general history of taxidermy, helped me create the context in which Walter Potter lived, worked, and built his stupendous collection.
Bruce Schwendeman and Emma Hawkins generously supplied me with materials from their personal archives, including early catalogs of Mr. Potter's Museum of Curiosities before it moved to Cornwall. I relied on these to write about Potter's life—what drove him and how he approached taxidermy—and also to trace the evolution of his museum from 1861 to 1986, when John and Wendy Watts bought it. For the museum's post-1986 history, I relied chiefly on the Bonhams press release, interviews, and newspaper articles.
Pat Morris's splendid article "An Historical Review of Bird Taxidermy in Britain" describes the bird displays at the Great Exhibition of 1851, including John Hancock's gyrfalcons and the original usage of the word "jizz." A History of British Taxidermy by Christopher Frost chronicles taxidermy's rise and fall. It also describes the era's leading taxidermists, such as Hancock and Herrmann Ploucquet and how they practiced their trade during taxidermy's most faddish epoch. Montagu Browne's Practical Taxidermy describes how the Great Exhibition of 1851 led to the rise of artistic taxidermy in Britain.
Charles Waterton's quotes are from his book Wanderings in South America.
Calke Abbey is a 1622 country house filled with glass cases containing fascinating collections acquired by several generations of the Harpur-Crewe family. Sir Vauncey Harpur-Crewe's late-nineteenth-century natural history cases—including domed birds, butterflies, and eggs; Egyptian curiosities; a crocodile skull; deer heads; and fossils—are still on display in period rooms that have been restored by the National Trust, which has owned the property since 1985. I toured Calke Abbey with the exceptionally knowledgeable Pat Morris. For those unable to visit, the National Trust's guidebook (1989) provides an excellent virtual tour.
For information about El Negro, see "Gaborone Journal; Africa Rejoices as a Wandering Soul Finds Rest" by Rachel L. Swarns, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/06/world/gaborone-journal-africa-rejoices-as-a-wandering-soul-finds-rest.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. This article appeared in the New York Times on October 6, 2000.
I discovered the wonderful word "anthropomorphophobic" in The Postmodern Animal by Steve Baker.
Details about Errol Fuller appeared in New Scientist, May 2004; the Vancouver Sun, May 15, 2004; the Guardian, November 13, 1999; the Observer, April 10, 1994; and the Spectator, November 8, 2003.
Richard Taylor's campaign to save the museum was reported in the Guardian on September 8, 2003. Damien Hirst's efforts to buy Potter's appeared in the Financial Times on September 24, 2003, and in Cornwall's local daily, the Western Morning News, on September 24, 2003, which also reported that Bonhams said it had no record of Hirst's offer. His letter in the Guardian, titled "Mr. Potter, Stuffed Rats and Me," ran on September 23, 2003; see www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2003/sep/23/heritage.
Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, on the waterfront below the Pike Place Market in Seattle, has human mummies.
For information about the post-auction legal dispute, see "Strange Case of Damien Hirst and the Stuffed Squirrel Sale," Times (London), December 6, 2007, http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article3007o8g.ece. When I asked Bonhams whether the legal dispute had been resolved, the auction house had no comment.
7. IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA
Facts about Damien Hirst and his artworks, including his quotes, are primarily from On the Way to Work by Damien Hirst and Gordon Burn; Damien Hirst, the exhibition catalog for his show at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples, Italy, in 2004; I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, with Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now; and Carol Vogel's critiques in the New York Times.
I read about "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" in Martin Gayford's article "Would You Adam and Eve It?" in the Telegraph Magazine (February 28, 2004). The New York Times ran a piece on the replacement tiger shark on October 1, 2006. The newspaper and magazine reviews of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" were all published in February and March of 2004.
I read about Francis Bacon in Francis Bacon (Centre Georges Pompidou, 1996) and in Steve Baker's The Postmodern Animal. Hirst describes how he feels about Bacon in On the Way to Work.
The New York Times published an article that describes the crucified cows on October 1, 2006; Damien Hirst describes the similar concept in On the Way to Work: "I want to do a cow hacked open like that with its arms open. I'm going to do three, sixteen foot. A whole crucifixion. Can't resist it. Sixteen-foot tanks. Massive. With all cows skinned and peeled apart ... Fantastic."
8. KEN AND THE IRISH ELK
The basis for Edmonton's "inferiority complex" is from a discussion I had with my friend Tim Tokarsky, an Edmontonian who studied geophysics. I was also incredibly lucky to find myself seated next to Leah Dolgoy, another spirited Edmontonian, on the flight to Alberta.
In addition to Ken Walker's encyclopedic knowledge, my primary source for information about Megaloceros giganteus—phylogenetic, historic, and cultural—was the Irish elk chapter in Extinct by Anton Gill and Alex West (Macmillan, 2003). I also used the following articles, essays, and academic papers: "A Lesson from the Old Masters" by Stephen Jay Gould ( Natural History, August 1996); "The Phylogenetic Position of the 'Giant Deer' Megaloceros giganteus" by A. M. Lister, C. J. Edwards, D.A.W. Nock, M. Bunce, I. A. van Pijlen, D. G. Bradley, M. G. Thomas, and I. Barnes ( Nature, December 2005); "Why Antlers Branched Out" by Valerius Geist ( Natural History, April 1994); "Irish Elk Survived After Ice Age Ended" by Sid Perkins ( Science News, November 6, 2004); "DNA Pegs Irish Elk's Nearest Relatives" by Sid Perkins ( Science News, October 1, 2005); "Giants Survived Human Onslaught" by Ross MacPhee ( New Scientist, November 13, 2004); "Survival of the Irish
