Fowl play . Redpoll paintings By L.A. Fuertes courtesy of Cornell University Library . Good hoaxes are. A swashbuckling British soldier during the first World War, he was nonetheless fired for insubordination. When he donated his collection of almost 20,000 stuffed birds to the Natural History Museum, one ornithologist is said to have suggested that the lot be torched to prevent scientific confusion in the future.
Scientists use specimens in natural history museums to categorize new plants and animals.
As such, the museums serve as three-dimensional biological reference books. A few of the best-looking birds, however, had been prepared with a variety of better techniques which, Knox concluded, reflected the work of unsuspecting collectors or taxidermists later appropriated by Meinertzhagen. The conclusion was buttressed a few years later, when researchers looking for a small owl in India deduced that Meinertzhagen had stolen and claimed a rare forest owlet specimen as his own. Although the taxidermy did not match Meinertzhagen's techniques, the sample did yield a type of cotton found in forest owlets at the Natural History Museum. Unfortunately for the late Meinertzhagen, those birds had been collected by someone else.