After fire destroyed the Portland Society of Natural History (PSNH) building and collections in 1866, membership asked for donations, imploring “the aid of the friends of science everywhere to enable” the PSNH to continue its work.

They established ten areas for donations: minerals, rocks, and marls; fossils and petrifactions; shells: marine, land, or freshwater; corals, sponges, and seaweeds; insects, snakes, turtles, and lizards; birds and their nests and eggs; bones and skins of animals; pressed plants, seeds, and fruits; woods and barks; and mosses, lichens, and fungi.

Other museums donated collections. The Essex Institute of Salem, Massachusetts, sent crates of coral and shells, the Boston Society of Natural History sent publications, and the Smithsonian sent shells and ethnographic items from the Arctic and Fiji Islands.