'Dry Storeroom No. 1 – The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum,' by Richard Fortey

We meet, for example, Leslie Bairstow, an expert on belemnites (the fossil remains of ancient squid-like beings) who joined the museum in 1932. During his tenure at the museum, Bairstow published nothing but collected everything, including the string from parcels that had been sent to him. When he retired, the string turned out to have been filed in boxes according to length; one box contained “pieces of string too small to be of use.”

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