Introduction
In many ways, modern science was born and grew up during the Victorian era, and if you were a child during the 19th century you were growing up right along with it! In fact, many of the ideas about nature that were new to children were also new to their parents -- because they were new to scientists themselves. This exhibit explores this idea by touching on some of the ways that “little scientists” might have come across topics about science and nature as part of their everyday lives at home.

For an ordinary child of the middling classes, ideas and activities related to science and nature were most likely to be tried out or glimpsed at home. (It is true that you also might learn some science in school, but schooling was not as widespread for every child as it is today, and how to fit science into school was a new idea that was just then being worked out.)

Our inspiration for this exhibit comes from the 150th anniversary celebrations of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species being planned across the world for 2009 (not only that, but 2009 is also the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth). While most of the lectures and displays and commemorations will center on what was happening in science and society circa 1859 from the adult perspective, we have chosen instead to shift the focus from adults to that of the world of children in this century of scientific innovation, with a particular emphasis on the natural world that excited Darwin and which he worked all his life to explain.