Legacies

This chapter discusses Dresser’s legacies and explores why he and his contemporaries fell from sight, as scientific ornithology shifted from a collection-based discipline to a hypothesis-driven system. It explores the rise—and fall—of specimen collecting on a near-industrial level. It suggests that Dresser was sidelined as a result of post-imperialist views, anti-collecting and anti-individualism as a kind of ‘anti-Victorianism’, in the style of Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians. The chapter includes a tailpiece of Richard Meinertzhagen’s ‘reminiscences’ of Dresser (possibly fraudulent as Meinertzhagen has been shown to be an inventor of many stories). The book concludes with commentary on the relationship between ornithology and business, and on how Dresser and his contemporaries worked hard to produce reliable information, which served as the basis for further work. It concludes by exploring how Henry’s collections continue to be used today in new ways and for new uses.