Natural history products formed an important, but little studied, component of the globalization of trade in the mid nineteenth century. The trade, specifically in zoology, occurred in the face of considerable challenges. It penetrated some of the more remote areas of the globe; its products were heterogeneous and difficult to price; and exchange occurred among scientists, commercial traders, and collectors, each of whom had their own particular practices and mores. This article charts the dimensions of this trade and offers explanations about the ways in which its complexities were addressed through major developments in taxidermy, taxonomy, transport and business logistics, alternative forms of exchange, and trust-based networks. More broadly, our work speaks to current developments in global history, imperial networks, and the history of scientific collecting.

Hair morphology has been studied and applied in several subjects, such as food quality control, archaeology, criminology, and ecology. Although medullar and scale patterns of hair structure are well known for a variety of mammal species, the effects of hazardous conditions on the internal and external morphology of hair are not known. In the present work, white-eared opossum (Didelphis albiventris) hairs were submitted to taxidermy, digestion, and putrefaction processes, and afterwards their structure was compared to control hairs, under the scanning electron microscope and light microscope. The results obtained indicate that the processes tested do not cause damage to the medullar and scale patterns of the opossum's hairs. In conclusion, based on the experiments with D. albiventris hairs, it is possible to compare hairs from museum collections or freshly collected hairs to hairs found in scats, gut contents, pellets, or other sources.