Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
By 1813
Notes:
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 (Faxon 1915). Walter Faxon, "Relics of Peale's Museum," Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 59, no. 3 (July 1915): 133, speculated about the provenance of MCZ 67837 and 67838 (shown here), data-deficient specimens from the Boston Museum collection: "I believe [MCZ 67837] to be Bonaparte's type [of Charadrius semipalmatus], and the individual figured by Wilson as Tringa hiaticula on his 69th [sic, =59th] plate. [MCZ 67838] is probably the specimen afterward described and figured by Bonaparte" (1833, American Ornithology, vol. 4, Philadelphia: Carey & Lea). Faxon's claim may be true, but MCZ 67838 is in extremely poor condition, making a comparison to published illustrations seem futile. / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/6339801#page/183/mode/1up Wilson (1810: viii, American Ornithology, vol. 2) wrote: "no drawings have been, or will be made for this work, from any stuffed subjects, where living specimens of the same can be procured; yet the former serve a very important purpose; they enable the author to ascertain the real existence and residence of such subjects" / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175511#page/14/mode/1up Wilson deposited many specimens at Peale's Museum, after completing his drawings, but the combined evidence from American Ornithology and the Peale Museum Accessions Book (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, coll. 0481) suggests that he deposited probably fewer than 100 skins total (and possibly as few as 40-50), whereas many authors have assumed that all the "Peale numbers" cited in Wilson's work were those of his own specimens (e.g., "he contributed 279 specimens to the collection", Edward H. Burtt, Jr., and William E. Davis, Jr., 2013, Alexander Wilson: The Scot Who Founded American Ornithology, Belknap Press, p. 310). This assumption appears to be based on a misunderstanding — Wilson was citing the numbers to give credit to Peale, to acknowledge his contributions, not to stake a claim to his own discoveries. If Burtt & Davis (2013) were correct, the "Catalogue of Duplicate Specimens" (APS Library, Mss.B.P31) would be full of Wilson's specimen deposits—but this is not the case. No duplicate of Semipalmated Plover is listed. To the editor's (MRH) knowledge, there is no evidence that Wilson deposited a Semipalmated Plover at Peale's Museum.
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Semipalmated Plover
Current Scientific Name
Charadriidae | Charadrius semipalmatus
Repository:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ 67837)
