Swamp Sparrow (mounted taxidermy)

Object Status:

Unlocated

Accession Date:

By 1799

Primary Source Reference:

Charles Willson Peale, Lecture on Natural History 34. (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) described a specimen in his 34th Lecture (ca. 1799) that may have been this species: "No. 1608. Sooty sparrow; large spots of black on the head, back, & wings; a dingy white line over each Eye; same white on the throat, with a black stripe on each side; the upper & under part of the body a sooty brown. This is not very common. I wish to make some further observations on this species. I don't know whether this [specimen] is a male or female or whether [it] is only a bird of passage, or a transient or accidental visitor." (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Archives, coll. 40)

Peale wrote, in "A Walk Through the Philad[elphi]a Museum" (1805–1806): "The Sooty Sparrow … [was] found in the vicinity of Philadelphia. very few of our Sparrows have been described by Naturalists." (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, coll. 0481)

Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) described this species under the name "Swamp Sparrow / Fringilla palustris" in American Ornithology vol. 3 (Pl. 22), where "Peale's Museum, No. 6569" was cited (Wilson 1811: 49). / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175516#page/61/mode/1up (text) / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175516#page/60/mode/1up (plate)

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): 137, wrote that a data-deficient specimen (MCZ 67861) from the Boston Museum collection was "Probably the type" of Wilson's Fringilla palustris. This may be true, but there is evidence that the species was mounted in Peale's museum by 1799, and Peale had little space (or interest) to display duplicates. / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/6339801#page/187/mode/1up Wilson (1810: viii, American Ornithology, vol. 2) also 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". / 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 specimen deposits. To the editor's (MRH) knowledge, there is no evidence that Wilson deposited a Swamp Sparrow at Peale's Museum. Despite this uncertainty, the MCZ database lists MCZ 67861 as the "Holotype of Fringilla palustris" and the specimen was included in a recently funded grant proposal aimed at "Preserving the genomes of the type specimens in the MCZ (CSBR)" (National Science Foundation, NSF Collections in Support of Biological Research: Award #1946857). / https://mczbase.mcz.harvard.edu/guid/MCZ:Orn:67861 Greenberg et al. (2016, "Geographic population structure and subspecific boundaries in a tidal marsh sparrow", Conservation Genetics 17: 603–613) asserted that this species was "observed in the late eighteenth century by ... Alexander Wilson". / https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10592-016-0809-6 / However, there is no evidence for this. Wilson did not begin his ornithological studies in earnest until 1803, and did not publish his description until 1811. For more discussion, see Matthew R. Halley, 2022, "Rediscovery of the holotype of the American Goshawk, Accipiter gentilis atricapillus (Wilson, 1812), and a commentary about Alexander Wilson’s contributions to the Peale Museum," Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. 167: 171-178. / https://doi.org/10.1635/053.167.0114 Similarly, Greenberg et al. (2007, "Stable-Isotope (C, N, H) Analyses Help Locate the Winter Range of the Coastal Plain Swamp Sparrow (Melospiza georgiana nigrescens)", The Auk 124: 1137-1148), overlooking Peale's contribution, stated that "the first individual [of the Mid-Atlantic subspecies M. g. nigrescens was collected in 1804 by Alexander Wilson". / https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/124/4/1137/5562751