Now Is the Time to Collect: Daniel Giraud Elliot, Carl Akeley, and the Field Museum Africa Expedition of 1896

The rediscovery of a curators lost journal illuminates the astonishing African journey that formed the basis of the Chicago Field Museums famed collections

Now Is the Time to Collect tells the fascinating story of the Chicago Field Museum of Natural Historys zoological expedition to Africa in 1896, the source of many of the museums foundational collections and an astounding episode in nineteenth-century science. After the well-publicized extinction of the dodo and Carolina parakeet and the collapse of the American bison population, late nineteenth-century naturalists expected many more vulnerable species to die out with spread of Western-style industrialization. This triggered a race to collect rare species of animals expected soon to be lost forever.

Established in 1893, Chicagos ambitious Field Museum aimed to become a global center of study. Zoologist Daniel Giraud Elliot persuaded museum patrons to fund an immediate expedition to British Somaliland (contemporary Somalia). There, his team hunted and killed hundreds of animals for the growing collection. On the trip was groundbreaking taxonomist Carl Akeley. Back in Chicago, Akeley created captivating lifelike dioramas of rare animal groups that enhanced the museums fame and remain popular to this day.

Enriched with illuminated passages from Elliots journal, only recently rediscovered, Now Is the Time to Collect is the first book of its kind by an American museum and a case study in what author Paul D. Brinkman calls salvage zoologythe practice of aggressively collecting rare animal specimens for preservation just prior to the birth of the modern conservation movement. It is a riveting account of the expedition, the travelers experiences in Somalia during its colonial period, and the astonishing origins of one of Chicagos classic museum experiences.
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