120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 1913

Giant of the cemetery, the oldest earthworm specimen in the collection (Geogenia caementerii) by Thembeka Nxele, Curator of Oligochaeta

This is the oldest specimen in the Natural Sciences collections. It was collected in 1905 by E. Warren who sent it overseas to a German zoologist, Wilhelm Michealsen, for identification because there was no expertise in the country at that time. In 1913, Michaelsen described the specimen as a new variation of Microchaetus papillatus (var. caementerii), which Plisko later transferred to Geogenia. Warren collected this species from St. Peter’s Churchyard in Pietermaritzburg. More specimens of this species have been collected from the cemetery yards around Pietermaritzburg in recent years. During a funeral at Thembeni cemetery, one specimen of G. caementerii showed up and because of its big size, people started saying it must be an ancestor of the dead because how can such a big earthworm be in the cemetery!

The earthworm collection at the KZN Museum is the largest on the continent and play a vital role in understanding soils and soil ecology in the region. Though there was no resident expert when this specimen was collected, we now have in house research and are leaders in this field.

Photo taken from: http://pdfpublish.co.za/uploaded/CathedralOfTheHolyNativity.pdf

Geogenia caementerii (in the original bottle and original name)

120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 1935

Rock art rendering by Mary Young by Ghilraen Laue, Curator of Special Collections

The above copy from Game Pass shelter is one of many copies, made by Mary Young, housed in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum’s collections. The copies were only accessioned into the collections in the 1980s, but there is evidence that there were donated to the museum in the early 1970s or before. The only information that was originally included with the tracings and copies is that they were made in the 1930s by John and Mary Young. Through some detective work we have managed to find out more information. Comparisons with handwriting on the tracings and old letters confirms that the copies were the work of Mary Young.

Mary Margaret Young (née Gay) was born in London in 1898. When she was a young woman a doctor found a spot on her lung and recommended a change in climate. She moved to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and loved it. In the 1930s she married John Young. They both had an interest in archaeology and a love of nature. They spent many weekends hiking in the Drakensberg, where it seems Mary Young traced rock art images at various sites while her husband collected and recorded stone artefacts. Mary Young’s work is an early example of direct tracing of rock art, rather than free hand copies, which were more common at the time. She strove for accuracy in both the shape and the colours of the images. She died in Pietermaritzburg in 1971.

120 Years in 120 Objects

Join the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in celebrating the museum’s 120^th year of orbiting the sun. Staff and guest curators have chosen one object or item per year of our existence to highlight to the public. Visit the website and our social media platforms regularly to see the latest object and keep an eye out for information about a physical exhibition later this year!

Today’s Object is from 2004

Field Guide to the land snails and slugs of eastern South Africa by Nelisiwe Manukuza, Research Technician in Malacology

The book was written by Dai Herbert and Dick Kilburn in 2004 and was dedicated to the three pioneers of South African terrestrial malacology: Henry Clifden Burnup, Major Matthew William Kemble Connolly and Dr A.C. (Dolf) van Bruggen whom without their earlier studies it would not have been possible. The book was published in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum’s centenary year and celebrated 100 years of malacological research at the museum. The purpose of writing this field guide was to bring to light the remarkable diversity of terrestrial molluscan life occurring in the eastern region of South Africa. The authors hoped to provide a tool for biologists and naturalists in turn to study these fascinating animals in greater detail. The book concentrated on the fauna of the eastern part of South Africa (essentially KwaZulu-Natal and former Transkei now part of the Eastern Cape Province), as far south as Mbashe River. However, a large proportion of species also range further into the Eastern Cape, and into the provinces of Mpumalanga and Gauteng (previously part of the Transvaal), and even into the adjacent countries of Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho.