The History of the South African Museum

When their oldest son, jules, was 11 or maybe 12, he travelled with his uncle, naturalist, pierre de lalande, to south africa. And when the two of them came back, they brought more than a hundred and 30 thousand specimens home with them. This number was mostly made up of plant specimens, but there were also almost 300 mammals, more than two thousand birds, and several hundred fish and reptiles. Jules studied anatomy and taxidermy, and he had this natural proclivity for preserving biological samples.