White-eyed Vireo (mounted taxidermy)

Object Status:

Unlocated

Primary Source Reference:

Charles Willson Peale, Lecture on Natural History 35. (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 35th Lecture (ca. 1799): "No. 1674. White eye Flycatcher. This name designates it well, as none other have the iris white. It is about the size of our small sparrow. The upper parts are an olive green, yellow at the base of the upper mandible, which extends round the Eyes. The throat & upper part of the breast cenerious, below tending to yellow. Covert feathers of the wings edged with light, quills edged with green. No. 1675. Female, not so bright in the green & yellow, otherwise much like the male." In the same lecture, in his account of the "Yellow Throat Flycatcher" (i.e., Yellow-throated Vireo, Vireo flavifrons), Peale wrote: "I do not find either these or the white eyes just described taken notice of by Authors of Natural History." (Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Archives, coll. 40)

Peale compared this species to the Yellow-throated Vireo (V. flavifrons), which was not yet described to science, in "A Walk Through the Philad[elphi]a Museum" (1805-1806): "White eyed flycatcher ... this we consider a proper name for the same reason, besides it distinguishes it from another species, of the same size, and much like it, except that it has a yellow throat." (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, coll. 0481)

Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) described this species under the name "White-eyed Flycatcher / Muscicapa cantatrix" in American Ornithology vol. 2 (Pl. 18), where "Peale's Museum, No. 6778" was cited (Wilson 1810: 166). / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175511#page/188/mode/1up (text) / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/175511#page/166/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): 139, speculated about the provenance of MCZ 67867, a data-deficient specimen from the Boston Museum collection: "Although badly battered, this specimen appears to me to be the original of the portrait of Muscicapa cantatrix Wils. Even the ghastly stare of the white glass eye is caught in Wilson's copy. The gape of the beak, too, is exactly the same." This may be true, but Peale already had this species mounted in the museum by 1799 and did not have space (or interest) to display duplicates. 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 it was probably fewer than 50 skins, 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. If Burtt & Davis (2013) were correct, the "Catalogue of Duplicate Specimens" (APS Library, Mss.B.P31) would be full of Wilson's specimen deposits—but this is not the case. To the editor's (MRH) knowledge, there is no evidence that Wilson deposited a White-eyed Vireo at Peale's Museum, and there is no duplicate listed. Despite this uncertainty, the MCZ online database lists MCZ 67867as the "Holotype of Muscicapa cantatrix" 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:67867

Specimen Type:

Dead/preserved

Current Common Name:

White-eyed Vireo

Current Scientific Name

Vireonidae | Vireo griseus

Repository:

Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University (MCZ 67867)