For more than three centuries the collections of the Ashmolean Museum have occupied a position of primary importance in the history of collecting in Great Britain and an honourable position in the development of museums on a European scale. Many collection catalogues (especially those of the natural sciences), compiled by curators over the past two or three hundred years, have never before been published. This volume - a further volume, designated Part II is to follow - starts to bring these collections to a wider audience. Their independent importance is considerable, for they provide not only a record through time of the fluctuating content of the Ashmolean but also an index of the changing preoccupations of the collectors and donors who progressively enriched the museum, of the curators who tended it, and of the wider community of scholars for whom the collections represented a fundamental resource.