Budleigh’s sponge expert on show at NHM



 Research on Budleigh Salterton's 19th century sponge expert by Fairlynch volunteer Michael Downes has helped curators prepare an exhibition at London's Natural History Museum.


 Above: The feature on Henry Carter FRS in the Natural History Museum's display 'Untold Human Stories from the NHM Porifera Collection.'
 Budleigh Salterton’s only native-born Fellow of the Royal Society Henry Carter was the main subject of the 2013 Fairlynch exhibition ‘Sea, Salt and Sponges.’ 

 













The exhibition was accompanied by a booklet ‘The Scientist in The Cottage’, written by Fairlynch Museum Secretary Michael Downes. It was praised by the NHM’s Emma Sherlock, Curator in the Invertebrate Section of the Zoology Department at the Museum, and is the first-ever published biography of the Budleigh-born surgeon, geologist and spongologist. 

Emma explained that the booklet had helped in a project that she and her NHM colleagues were working on with regard to Henry Carter and fellow spongologist  James Scott Bowerbank.  “My volunteer ended up ordering one too as we enjoyed it so much,” she wrote.
 
Copies of ‘The Scientist in The Cottage’ are on sale at Fairlynch Museum.


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