1915.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 199 



THE EARLIEST SAMOAN PRINTS. 

 BY WILLIAM CHURCHILL. 



The ethnica of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition (1837-1841) 

 underwent a series of disasters of such gravity that it is sur- 

 prising that anything was preserved. The official collections, 

 knowTi to have been of great magnitude and unrivalled importance, 

 were lost in the wreck of one of the vessels of the squadron on the 

 Columbia bar in Oregon. A surrogate collection was hastil}'' 

 assembled by Wilkes by annexing the specimens which had come 

 into the possession of officers and men. This second and inferior 

 collection reached Washington in 1842, vanished from sight for 

 fifty years and was not discovered until 1892,^ when I had the melan- 

 choly pleasure of installing in the National Museum all that had 

 survived the decay of half a century. All the perishable materials 

 had by that time gone into the end-products of decomposition. 



When the squadron put into Botany Bay, after completing the 

 survey of the islands from Tahiti to Fiji, the members of the civilian 

 scientific staff were landed as a matter of convenience, while the 

 naval officers went upon their dash toward the South Pole and the 

 discovery of Antarctica, only recently confirmed. In the civil 

 staff was Titian R. Peale, a young member of an old and respectable 

 family of Philadelphia. It is through him that The Academy of 

 Natural Sciences of Philadelphia is in possession of one of the best 

 collections of Polynesian ethnica any^vhere in the world. Others 

 are larger, but none is so seriously representative of the period before 

 foreign contamination had been introduced. The records show 

 little of the manner in which Peale's collection escaped the com- 

 mandeering by Wilkes after the disaster at the Columbia; but 

 it is evident that Peale landed his treasures when he went ashore 

 at Botany Bay and that thence he secured transport by way of 

 London to the United States. In due course of time he deposited 

 these important objects with The Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia, in his home to^vn, where now they are displayed in a 

 satisfactory manner and are available through the courtesy of the 

 Academy for purposes of study. 



1 It had been placed in the cellar of the Smithsonian Institution and buried 

 under many tons of incombustible coal. 



