Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
March 23, 1821
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 112
Additional Source Text:
"Zoological Specimen . . . prepared by Titian Peale, Assistant Naturalist, for the Exploring Expedition, and deposited in the Philadelphia Museum by Major S. H. Long. Maj. U.S. Eng[ineers pursuant to instructions of the Secretary of War."
Notes:
On this same date the Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania also recorded, from the same source, "2 New Specimen of Squirrel," for a total of five. Thomas Say listed four species of squirrels encountered on the expedition (Account, 1:370) as Sciurus cinerus (now Sciurus carolinensis, gray squirrel); Sciurus capistratus (now Sciurus niger, white-nosed squirrel, or fox squirrel); Sciurus striatus (now Tamias striatus, ground squirrel); and Sciurus nigra (now Sciurus niger, black squirrel, or fox squirrel). He also described at greater length two other species he first identified, probably the "2 New Specimen" mentioned here: Sciurus macroura Say (now Sciurus niger rufiventer); and Sciurus quadrivittatus Say (now Tamias quadrivittatus, or the Colorado chipmunk) (Account, 1: 115; 2: 45).
The Museum apparently received specimens of these two new species and three of the other four species. Edwin James, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819 and '20, by Order of the Hon. J.C. Calhoun, Sec'y of War: Under the Command of Major Stephen H. Long. From the Notes of Major Long, Mr. T. Say, and other Gentlemen of the Exploring Party, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1823). See also Hugh H. Genoways and Brett Ratcliffe, "Engineer Cantonment, Missouri Territory, 1819-1820: America's First Biodiversity Inventory," Great Plains Research, 18 (Spring 2008): 2-31 / https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280047792_Engineer_Cantonment_….
Titian Ramsay Peale executed watercolors of three of these species while engaged on the Long Expedition, two of which are pictured here: the Colorado chipmunk (Tamias quadrivittatus); and the ground squirrel (Tamias striatus).(The third was the gray squirrel / https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/gray-squirrels.
On 23 Mar 1821 the Museum received from Titian Ramsay Peale "6 Drawings of Squirrels (unfinished)" from the Long Expedition. Three of them are now at the American Philosophical Society (Object identifiers: graphics: 69, 107, 117). Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 112 He also executed a watercolor of what he called the line-tail squirrel (Sciurus trigrammmurus Say), but that species appears nowhere in the Account of the Long Expedition or in any of Say's other scientific publications / https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/object/line-tail-squirrel-female… Richard Harlan, Fauna Americana, pp. 164-167, described the Arctomys tridecemlineata (now Ictidomys tridecemlineatus, or the thirteen-lined ground squirrel (which he says was improperly placed in the genus Sciurus) from a specimen in the Philadelphia Museum brought back by the Long Expedition / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3194271
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
