Natural History Collections
To collect and preserve specimens and information covering the wildlife and geology of Perthshire & Kinross-shire.
150,000 specimens The museum holds large and important collections of zoological, botanical and geological material.
Most of the specimens originate from Perthshire and Kinross-shire, although there is a considerable amount of material from elsewhere in Britain and from overseas.
The collections are of national significance with the most important being: Lower Devonian fossil fish,
Perthshire plants, willows, British hemiptera & mollusca.
Over 220 years of collecting Since the founding of the Literary and Antiquarian Society of Perth in 1784 we have been building toward the collections we have today.
Many of the specimens were collected during the nineteenth century by members of the
Perthshire Society of Natural Science for the society's museum on Tay Street in Perth.
When that museum closed in 1902 they were gifted to the Perth town museum collections and became part of the present day Museum and Art Gallery.
Today
Modern day collecting is through local fieldwork and donations.
Most birds and mammals that are gifted are road casualties or birds that have flown into windows.
Perth Museum & Art Gallery maintains a local biological records database with over 16,000 records of wildlife sightings in Perthshire & Kinross-shire.
