The variety of taxidermied creatures mostly sourced from places far from England's shores on display at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London represented the Victorian fascination with natural history, exploration, and travel. Just before the exhibition, "gentlemen naturalists," such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, began breaking ground on their soon-to-be published revolutionary works on evolution and animal behavior, respectively. Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. Similarly, A.O. Hume, sent to India on behalf of the British…
