ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the history of collecting museum specimens to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by examining the Swiss botanist Hans Schinz, whose travels led him, among other destinations, to southwestern Africa. Hans Schinz, who hailed from a Zurich family of scientists, artists and traders, received his academic education in Zurich and Berlin. Schinz's mentors in Berlin were the botanist, ethnographer and linguist Professor Paul Ascherson. In 1893, Schinz obtained the post as Director of the Botanical Garden in Zurich, interestingly amidst heavy criticism aimed at Professor Karl Cramer, then the Director. Cramer, who, as Schinz continued to point out even forty years later, 'was not a Systematiker', had resigned due to various accusations, one being that he had totally neglected the Botanical Garden, the herbarium and the library. Schinz's various teaching guides to public collections and museums in Zurich attest to his very personal interest in reaching out to a general public, apart from his intense scientific labours.
