Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
Ocober 17, 1805
Primary Source Reference:
Charles Willson Peale to Thomas Jefferson, 22 October 1805 <em>Selected Papers</em>, 2, part 2: 900-901 (esp. n.1)
Additional Source Text:
United States Gazette (Philadelphia), 7 Feb 1806 adds: "This is one of the articles forwarded to the president by captain Lewis, from the Missouri, where they are said to be plenty. It is very extraordinary that whereas the animals of Europe and America differ essentially, the Mag-pye is precisely the same as the European, and until now was never proved to belong to this country."
Notes:
The bird was the black-billed magpie (Pica hudsonia).
Lewis and Clark sent a shipment (including six live animals) to Jefferson from Fort Mandan in April 1805. After traveling to St. Louis, New Orleans, and Baltimore, only one magpie and the "burrowing squirrel" survived. The shipment arrived in Washington in August, while Jefferson was at Monticello. (Jefferson Papers, Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-1507. [This is an Early Access document from The Papers of Thomas Jefferson.] Jefferson sent them on to Peale on 6 October 1805 (including the living magpie and "a dead one, preserved"), and several items in the shipment (although not the magpies) were recorded in the Accessions Book on 17 October (p.8). Peale acknowledged the shipment (including the magpies) in a letter to Jefferson of 22 October. <em>Selected Papers</em>, 2, part 2: 894, 900-901
Specimen Type:
Live (presumably eventually taxidermied/preserved)
Peale's Common Name:
Magpie
Current Common Name:
Black-billed magpie
Current Scientific Name
Pica hudsonia
