Coleoptera

Liverpool (now World) Museum still collects and still continues to rebuild its collections after the destruction caused by the May Blitz of 1941. In 1979 the Entomology (insect) collection curators exchanged marine specimens that had collected on Merseyside’s Sefton coast for a collection of beetles which were stored with Bootle Museum. The beetle collection had been in Liverpool for more than 100 years, but luckily when the original collector the Swiss man Frederick Chevrier wanted to find a home for his collection in 1849, Liverpool Museum had not yet opened. So he gave his collection to the Liverpool Royal Institution, one of 19th century Liverpool’s great cultural institutions. When the institution closed in 1948 the museum was still in a state of disarray and so the collection was offered instead to Bootle. The collection was kept safe by a number of Liverpool institutions before it finally arrived at World Museum.