Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
By 1805
Primary Source Reference:
Charles Willson Peale, "A Walk through the Philad[elphi]a Museum" (1805-1806). Historical Society of Pennsylvania, coll. 0481.
Additional Source Text:
Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) wrote, in "A Walk Through the Philad[elphi]a Museum" (1805–1806): "The Smew or White-nun (M. Albellus) is hansome, but not more so than the Hooded Merganser (M. cucullatus) whose white Crest is so beautifully bordered with black." (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, coll. 0481)
Curiously, Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) depicted this European species under the name “The Smew, or White Nun / Mergus albellus” in American Ornithology vol. 8 (Wilson 1814: 126, Pl. 71), with a text description of a different American species; although he did not cite the Peale Museum, his illustration was probably based on Peale's specimen (see Notes). / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175758#page/148/mode/1up (text) / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175758#page/141/mode/1up (plate)
Notes:
Wilson's plate 71 shows the Smew, evidently based on Peale's European specimen, but his anecdotes and text are a match to Bufflehead Bucephala albeola.
After Peale's Museum closed, a portion of Peale's bird collection was purchased in 1850 by Moses Kimball (1809–95), who displayed it at his "Boston Museum". An advertisement in the Boston Transcript, printed 1 October 1850, stated that Kimball had acquired "One Half of the celebrated Peale's Philadelphia Museum". The other half of Peale's birds had been sold to the circus promoter P. T. Barnum (1810–91) and would be subsequently destroyed in a fire at his "American Museum" in New York City in July 1865. When the Boston Museum closed, Kimball's Peale remnants passed temporarily to the Boston Society of Natural History, who disposed of them to Charles J. Maynard (1845-1929), a local taxidermist. The specimens were stored in a barn in Massachusetts for several years, then eventually were deposited at the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ), Harvard University. By the time the collection was catalogued by Walter Faxon (1848-1920) at MCZ, in 1914, in virtually every case the original mounts and labels had been disassociated from the specimens, and an untold number were lost.
Walter Faxon, "Relics of Peale's Museum," Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 59, no. 3 (July 1915): 135, contended that MCZ 67818, a data-deficient specimen from the Boston Museum collection, was the model for Wilson's plate: "One specimen, without question the original of Wilson's figure of Mergus albellus ... Audubon was convinced that Wilson copied this bird from a European specimen in Peale's Museum."
The editor (MRH) considers this plausible, considering the rarity of the specimen and its identical pose (shown here). Furthermore, this species does not appear in Peale's lectures, which suggests that he acquired shortly before writing the "Walk" essay in 1805-1806.
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Smew
Current Scientific Name
Anatidae | Mergellus albellus
Repository:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ 67818)
