Object Status:
Extant
Accession Date:
By 1798
Primary Source Reference:
Louis Pierre Vieillot ("1807", = c.1809). Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de l'Amérique Septentrionale: contenant un grand nombre d'espèces décrites ou figurées pour la première fois. Volume 2, p. 55. Paris: Chez Desray / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/180312#page/177/mode/1up
Additional Source Text:
Louis Pierre Vieillot (1748-1830), who visited Peale’s Museum sometime between 1793 and 1798, wrote in Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de l’Amérique Septentrionale, vol. 2, p. 55 (1807, Paris): “…j'ai vu à Philadelphie, dans le muséum de M. Peale, un Troglodyte qui m'a paru avoir la plus grande analogie avec l'Arada de Buffon. Cet individu, le seul qu'on ait trouvé dans l'Amérique septentrionale, a été tué dans le New-Jersey. Sans doute il s'étoit égaré car son pays natal est la Guiane, et sur-tout le Paraguay, où il est très-commun et où il porte les noms de Ratoncito et de Basacaraguay.”
English translation: “… I saw in Philadelphia, in Mr. Peale's museum, a Wren that seemed to me to have the greatest analogy to the “Arada” of Buffon. This individual, the only one found in North America, was killed in New Jersey. No doubt he had lost his way because his native country is Guiana, and especially Paraguay, where it is very common and where it bears the names of Ratoncito and Basacaraguay."
Notes:
The ”Arada” of Buffon, to which Vieillot (1807) referred, was the Musician Wren (Cyphorhinus arada)—a South American species that had been described based on specimens collected near Cayenne, French Guiana, a major South American trade center in the 18th century. Raphaelle Peale (1774-1825) traveled to Cayenne in 1793, to collect specimens for the museum, and Peale also received donations from other travelers to the region. If there was a specimen of Musician Wren in Peale’s Museum, as Vieillot (1807) surmised, then it almost certainly had a South American provenance and was simply mislabeled. To the editor's (MRH) knowledge, there is no detailed inventory of the specimens Raphaelle brought back from his 1793 expedition. For more discussion about his travels, see Lillian B. Miller, 1993, "Father and Son: The Relationship of Charles Willson Peale and Raphaelle Peale", The American Art Journal 25: 4-161. / https://doi.org/10.2307/1594599
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Musician Wren
Current Scientific Name
Troglodytidae | Cyphorhinus arada
