Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
By 1799
Primary Source Reference:
Charles Willson Peale, Lecture on Natural History 24. (ca. 1799). Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Archives, coll. 40. / https://ansp.org/research/library/archives/0000-0099/coll0040/
Additional Source Text:
Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) wrote, in his 24th Lecture (ca. 1799): "No. 689. Sea Swallow. about 11 Inches long; bill dusky; top of the head & nape black; fore head, throat and breast belly white; Back & wings light grey colour; first quils of the wings on the outer edge black; feet red; tail forked. Sterna naivia Linn. La Guifette Buff. pl. enl. 924. Kamtschatkan Pennant p. 525. A. Latham p. 358. No. 9. Var: A. Found generally throughout the sea shores of the United States. Buffon says on the shores of Picardy. Also observed at Kamtschatka. 690. A variety [i.e., likely a juvenile], the plumage brown, & rather a smaller bird." (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Archives, coll. 40)
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), curiously failed to mention MCZ 76053 and 83417 (both shown here), which were once in the Boston Museum collection, with Pealean provenance. According to their modern labels, both were collected in "North America".
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Common Tern
Current Scientific Name
Laridae | Sterna hirundo
Repository:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ 76053 and 83417)
