Object Status:
Extant
Accession Date:
By 1799
Primary Source Reference:
Charles Willson Peale, Lecture on Natural History 27. (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 27th Lecture (ca. 1799): "No. 1001. Little Rail. Perhaps the smallest species known; head cinerious brown; back and wings brown spotted with white; throat white; breast without spots; feet yellowish. Rallus minutus Linn. Le petit Rale de Cayenne? Buff. pl. enl. 847? Found in Pennsylvania and Maryland." (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Archives, coll. 40). The white throat mentioned by Peale suggests that his specimen was female.
John James Audubon, 1838, Ornithological Biography vol. 4, p. 359 (Edinburgh) quoted a letter from Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885) in his account of the "Least Water Rail" (L. jamaicensis): "There is now in the Museum a specimen of this species, which has been in the collection for about thirty years, said to have been caught in the vicinity of the city [Philadelphia]. It stands labelled 'Little Rail, Rallus minutus, Turton's Linn;' but the authenticity of the specimen has always been disputed by Bonaparte and others, because none else had been found; and the author just named expressed a belief that it was an immature specimen of Rallus (Crex) Porzana of Europe. I regret that I should have mislaid the measurements of the specimen when recent, if any were taken, and cannot lay my hands on them, or anything more than the above notes."
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Current Common Name:
Black Rail
Current Scientific Name
Rallidae | Laterallus jamaicensis
