The collections of the Macleay Museum are based largely on the efforts and acquisitions of the Macleays, one of the pre-eminent families in colonial Sydney: Alexander Macleay, William Sharp Macleay and William John Macleay.
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In 1879, he described Penaeus esculentus in a paper in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, basing his description on material in the Macleay Museum which had come from Port Jackson and Port Darwin, and noting that P. esculentus is "the common edible prawn of Sydney, and Newcastle, etc.".
Later he collected a large number of Australian insects; on his death these were bequeathed to his cousin William John Macleay, whose interest in natural history he encouraged and who in 1888 transferred them to the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney, for which act he was knighted.