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thanks to heracliteanfire:
(via monstermadeofeyes)
“… if Robert Ross’ predilection was a common one, the story of Herbert Wernham was a little odder. He was a curator in the Botany Department. In the 1910s he wrote on the suitably named madder family, Rubiacea. Edmund Launert told me that Wernham was always broke. He frequently took his wages in cash. He was soon relieved of his earnings by two women who appeared every Friday on the dot at the back of the Museum. Even so, he always had something at the pawnbrokers. But the most extraordinary part of his story was that after he died a card index was found which contained a series of neat entries filed in alphabetical order. On each card was the name of one of his sexual conquests accompanied by a neatly pined sprig of pubic hair. They might have been so many delicately coloured ferns. It seems that the instincts of the systematist were so deeply ingrained that he must perforce make an archive, duly arranged. Once a curator, always a curator.”
Richard Fortey, Dry Store Room No. 1
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