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) wrote, in his 34th Lecture (ca. 1799): "No. 1606. Spotted breast Sparrow. These have a thicker bill than the others; the throat, breast & under parts, sallow white, several deep brown feathers on the breast form a distinct spot, surrounded with a number of dark stripes, which also extend on each side to the tail; a dash of the same dark colour on each side of the throat; top of the head, back & wing coverts striped with black russet & grey; wing quills & tail brown edged with russet. No. 1607. Female. the general plumage the same, with less of the red cast; more of the cinerous or ashen colour. Their nest contains eggs of a blueish cast and [is] much speckled with brown like themselves." (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Archives, coll. 40)
Peale wrote, in "A Walk Through the Philad[elphi]a Museum" (1805–1806): "In the next case are a pair of the Spotted breasted Sparrow nest & Eggs. the male is a fine songster." (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, coll. 0481)
Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) described this species under the name "Song Sparrow / Fringilla melodia" in American Ornithology vol. 2 (Pl. 16), where "Peale's Museum No. 6573" was cited (Wilson 1810: 125) / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175511#page/143/mode/1up (text) / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175511#page/134/mode/1up (plate)
Three mounted specimens of "Fringilla melodia (Song Sparrow)" were 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 [unpublished] American Philosophical Society Library (Mss.B.P31).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): 137, speculated about the provenance of MCZ 67860, a data-deficient specimen from the Boston Museum collection: "This specimen is one of those large, heavily marked Song Sparrows, of a pronounced rufous tint, such as pass through eastern Massachussetts in small numbers in the spring, along with the Fox Sparrows. It agrees well with Wilson's figure, if some allowance is made for adapting the bird to its place on the plate. Mr. Outram Bangs (Proc. N. E. Zool. Club, 4, 1912, p. 86) is quite confident that it is the individual figured by Wilson." This may be true, but male and female specimens were already mounted in Peale's museum prior to 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 Song Sparrow at Peale's Museum. Despite this uncertainty, the MCZ database lists MCZ 67860 as the "Holotype of Fringilla melodia" 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:67860
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Song Sparrow
Current Scientific Name
Passerellidae | Melospiza melodia
Repository:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ 67860)
