Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
By 1799
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. Walter Faxon, "Relics of Peale's Museum," Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 59, no. 3 (July 1915): 136, speculated about the provenance of MCZ 67855, a data-deficient specimen from the Boston Museum collection: "Without doubt Wilson's figured type, male, mounted in the attitude of "booming" like the figure. When I first saw this specimen, after it had reached the Boston Society of Natural History rooms, the open mouth was lined with pinkish sealing-wax, just the colour of this part in Wilson's plate. Wilson probably copied the colour of the wax instead of the inside of a living bird's mouth." / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/6339801#page/186/mode/1up Faxon's claim is unlikely to be true. Wilson's (1814: 65-70) account makes clear that he collected many specimens of this species himself, and he previously stated that "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" (Wilson 1810: viii, American Ornithology, vol. 2). Therefore, Faxon's claim requires that Wilson deposited his illustrated male at Peale's Museum. / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175511#page/14/mode/1up However, male and female specimens of this species were already mounted in Peale's Museum by 1799, and Peale had little space to display duplicates. Peale also described the "booming" behavior in his lectures, so it is likely that his own specimens (which Wilson would have seen, as early as 1804) were mounted in a similar fashion. MCZ 67855 is more likely to be Peale's older specimen, than one hypothetically deposited by Wilson, for which there is no positive evidence. 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 specimen deposits. 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. There are no duplicates of Common Nighthawk listed. To the editor's (MRH) knowledge, there is no evidence that Wilson deposited a Common Nighthawk at Peale's Museum. In an apparent typographical error, Wilson (vol. 6, 1812: 95) gave the same number (7723) to the Chuck-will's-widow (Antrostomus carolinensis).
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Common Nighthawk
Current Scientific Name
Caprimulgidae | Chordeiles minor
Repository:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ 67855)
