NZ-The Interior of the Museum, Dunedin.

Small colonial engraving of the interior of the Otago Museum by William Crothers Fitler (1857-1915). The museum grew out of a suggestion, in the early 1860s, that colonial, gold-rich Otago should publicly exhibit a representative collection of its diverse rocks. When Provincial Geologist James Hector’s collection of 5,000 rocks and minerals went on display at the trade-promoting New Zealand Exhibition in Dunedin in 1865, the Provincial Government of Otago decided to act on the suggestion, by then enlarged to envision a museum of natural history.