Founded in 1753, the British Museum is one of the oldest large-scale comprehensive museums in the world run by a government. Let's start by taking a quick look back at the history of its insect collection.
The British Museum's holdings date largely to the collection of the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, which included around 5,000 plant and animal specimens, including those of insect collector James Petiver.
Later, Johann Fabricius, who studied the insect specimens brought back by the naturalist Joseph Banks along with the vast number of plants, and described over 10,000 species over his lifetime, donated parts of the collections of Charles Darwin, who proposed the theory of evolution, and Alfred Russel Wallace, who proposed the theory of natural selection, to the museum. Around 1880, the museum's ever-growing collections became too large to accommodate, and the natural history department was separated, and the new British Museum of Natural History was built.
A box showing the diversity of weevils by British scholar Francis Polkinghorne Pascoe. 
The entire skeleton of a blue whale is the museum's symbol. Behind the second floor of this hall is the beetle backyard.
The specimens that have been collected by such a wide range of researchers over hundreds of years now number an enormous number, with approximately 10 million beetles alone and 12.5 million lepidopteran specimens, including butterflies and moths.
This time, I was able to cover the historic collections with the guidance of specimen dealer Kazuhide Kobayashi, who frequently visited the backyard during his time studying in the UK. I was also joined by specimen artist Takataka Fukui, who was visiting the British Museum of Natural History as part of a project to redisplay the museum's old specimens, and he helped me select insect specimens that I really wanted to see.
"The quality and quantity of the collection is simply amazing. There's even a specimen box belonging to Pascoe, a researcher famous for his research on weevils, just sitting there, and the insects inside are all ones I've never seen before," says Fukui, his eyes shining.
"In Europe, when a great collector passes away, his collection is passed on to future generations and continues to be added to, a process that has been repeated for centuries. This long history has led to the incredible richness of the collection," says Kobayashi, reminiscing about the backstage area.
Curator Keita Matsumoto (right) accurately found the insect we were looking for from the vast collection. 
The vast backyard is like a three-dimensional maze, with endless walls of cabinets. I got lost a few times, no joke. In some places, the cabinets are double-stacked. 
This brooch beetle has a tiger-striped pattern that I have never seen in any illustrated book. It is truly a treasure trove of rare items. 
Everyone was taken aback by the imposing size of this gigantic weevil specimen, something they had never seen before. The world is truly vast. It's also unique in that it's covered in moss-like hairs. 
The specimens that Darwin collected and brought back to England were displayed alongside maps. The square specimen boxes are unique to England. 
Even jewel beetles and their eggs had been made into specimens and collected.
This time, we were also able to see the "Historic Entomology Collections," which are even more specially managed. This is the section of the museum that stores specimens of particular historical value, and it contains only old specimens from the 17th and 18th centuries, such as those by Sloane and Banks. The Darwin collection is relatively new, and is usually located in the back yard, which gave us a sense of the museum's long history.
Historic Entomology Collections
This is a special area for storing items of historical value from the specimen collection. It is filled with rare and exquisite items!
One of the world's oldest insect specimens, from the 1600s, was preserved in a "pressed flower style."
This Hercules beetle was obtained approximately 300 years ago. Its excellent state of preservation is almost miraculous. 
Chief Curator Barclay gave us a special tour of this historic collection section. 
The beautiful cursive labels written by many entomologists over the years are also worth seeing. 
A petiver specimen in a small glass box. Its history is different from modern management methods.
