Object Status:
Extant
Accession Date:
By 1814
Primary Source Reference:
Alexander Wilson (1814). American ornithology, or, The natural history of the birds of the United States: illustrated with plates engraved and colored from original drawings taken from nature. Volume 8, Plate 72. Philadelphia: Bradford and Inskeep, Robert Carr / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/46364729 (text) / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/46364716 (plate)
Additional Source Text:
Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) described this species under the name "Marsh Tern / Sterna aranea" in American Ornithology vol. 8, published posthumously (Pl. 72), where "Peale's Museum, No. 3521" was cited (Wilson (1814: 143). Wilson (1814: 144) wrote that "a specimen of this Tern has been deposited in the Museum of this city".
Ord (1824: 159, American Ornithology 2nd edition) wrote that Wilson's type was lost.
An unmounted specimen of "Sterna aranea (Marsh Tern)" from Florida was listed in "A Catalogue of Duplicate Specimens...", May 1822. [unpublished] American Philosophical Society Library (Mss.B.P31).
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): 128, speculated about the provenance of MCZ 67812, a data-deficient specimen from the Boston Museum collection: "According to [George] Ord [1824, American Ornithology vol. 8, 2nd edition] ... Wilson's type of Sterna aranea in the Peale Museum was lost. Titian R. Peale succeeded in procuring another specimen which became the subject of Bonaparte's remarks on this species ... the single specimen in the Boston Museum collection [MCZ 67812] is very probably the bird examined by Bonaparte." / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/6339801#page/178/mode/1up The editor (MRH) has been unable to locate the statement cited by Faxon (1915), about the loss of the S. aranea type, which does not appear in Ord (1824) as cited. / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/233396#page/183/mode/1up / nor does it appear in the third edition, which was edited by Ord and published in 1829 by Harrison Hall in Philadelphia. / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/228884#page/264/mode/1up
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Gull-billed Tern
Current Scientific Name
Laridae | Gelochelidon nilotica
Repository:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ 67812)
