"Hippocephaloides of Dr Plot" Or How One Thing Leads To Another

Abstract

Dr. Robert Plot (1640 - 1696) is perhaps best known as the first Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford (opened in 1683), although he also served as Professor of Chemistry in the University and as Secretary and Editor to the Royal Society. Since Plot apparently had a reputation for greediness, it is arguably somewhat surprising that he accepted the Ashmolean Keepership; it was, as its second holder, Edward Lhwyd (1660 - 1709), pointed out, "a mean place, seeing that there is no salary" (Vernon and Vernon, 1909, p. 17). However, despite being described by Lhwyd as having "as bad morals as ever M. A. had, " Plot was a man of extensive learning and a prolific publisher. Probably his most famous work is The Natural History of Oxfordshire (1677), which includes accounts of 'formed stones', many of which can easily be recognised as being fossils in the modern sense of the term. Plot, however, was no believer in the organic origin of even these. One of them, recognisable from Plot's illustration as an internal mould of the Upper Jurassic bivalve Myophorella hudlestoni, was described as "the most like to the head of a Horse as anything I can think of " and therefore given the name Hippocephaloides.