COLLECT examples of just about every living entity for 150 years or so and what do you get? Around half a million items, that’s what.

The vast collections of the Natural History Society of Northumbria were squirrelled away in the former Hancock Museum in Newcastle – now the Great North Museum.

The many thousands of specimens have now been moved to the basement of Discovery Museum in Newcastle, which has been designated as the Great North Museum Resource Centre.

Custom-built storage racks and trays have been installed, together with a system that creates a controlled environment to preserve the collections.

Now Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums is to run three public “test” tours of the astonishing array of objects to gauge demand.

Visitors will see rows of trophy heads of big game animals – now very much out of fashion but still a valuable scientific resource.

Bones abound, from elephants, hippos, whales, dolphins, crocodiles, moose, antelope, to lions and tigers.

In the bone store are also those of the extinct Moa, an ostrich-like bird from New Zealand.

Stuffed animals are everywhere, from a Chillingham wild white bull to big cats, flocks of birds and a half-inch pygmy shrew.

Dan Gordon, keeper of biology, who will be leading one of the tours, has a particular favourite in the stuffed department. It is a juvenile Great Auk, another extinct bird and one of only two preserved youngsters known in the world.

“It is incredibly precious. This is a record of a bird that has gone, and this is the only way we know about what the juvenile bird looked like,” says Dan.

The Northumbria society accepted items from travellers, explorers, game hunters, sailors and professional bone diggers.

“In the days before photography, bringing back skulls and mounted specimens was the only way people cold see what these creatures looked like,” says Dan.

Some carry labels which give the date and location of the animal’s demise, such as the elan bagged in 1889 at Africa’s Pungwe River.

In among the collections is a letter dated 1919 from a lady living in Queen Alexandra Road in North Shields, offering the society an albatross caught off Cape Horn by her sea captain brother, and whale teeth.

She also offers the harpoon that accounted for the whale, if the society is interested.

Some of the trophies were shot by Sunderland-born big game hunter and naturalist Abel Chapman, who retired to Northumberland.

There are also examples of work of taxidermy pioneer and naturalist John Hancock, after whom the Newcastle museum was named.

The collection contains Victorian glass-fronted boxes in which static stuffed specimens were exhibited.

Hancock introduced the concept of movement and often drama in his taxidermy.

One of his creations in the store is “Struggle with the Quarry”, which depicts a falcon attacking a heron, which has just caught an eel.

The piece was shown at the 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, and has travelled the world – its latest outing was to a show at Yale University in the United States.

“John Hancock took the static taxidermy of the time and introduced motion and life to his subjects. It was groundbreaking,” says Dan.

Sometimes exhibits arrive in an unusual way. A freezer full of recently deceased acquisitions includes a woodcock that flew into the glass of the Great North Museum.

Another recent arrival has been a dead red kite from the re-introduced population in the Derwent Valley in Gateshead. There are ranks of bird skins, mounted on sticks like feathered lollipops.

Among the mounted specimens is an Ivory Gull, which lives near the North Pole.

It illustrates how these collections from the past are scientifically important for the present and the future.

“The gull is one of the species imperilled by climate change and this specimen may be of great significance in the future,” says Dan.

The chemical composition of specimen birds’ feathers can give vital clues on location of hatching and feeding, which is of scientific value in a changing world that is impacting on wildlife.

The same applies to 50 red squirrel skins, which have already been used in genetic research to help the North’s current red population to survive.

The controlled environment conditions are essential.

Dan says: “Everything is environmentally regulated. It is a completely stable environment where we are trying to stop time so that deterioration does not take place.”

This preserves the stuffed pet dogs.

“The dogs are breeds of animals and breeds do die out so this is an interesting record,” says Dan.

Beyond the bones and the stuffed animals are the 12,000 birds’ eggs, snakes and sharks, insect, plant and fossil collections.

Then there is the collection of house bricks.

Keeper of archaeology Andrew Parkin, who will also lead the tours , said that the bricks – many made by different North East collieries – were useful as a database for site-dating purposes.

The free 10am-noon Saturday tours are on October 1, November 5 and December 3 , 10am -12pm. To book please email greatnorthmuseum@twmuseums .org.uk or call 0191 222 5121.