60 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTOlSr. 



prietors were men of scientific tastes, who affiliated with the nat- 

 uralists of the day and placed their collections freely at the dis- 

 posal of investigators. 



The earliest was the Philadelphia Museum, established by 

 Charles Wilson Peale, and for a time housed in the buildine of 

 the American Philosophical Society. In iSoo it was full of pop- 

 ular attractions. 



" There were a mammoth's tooth from the Ohio, and a woman's 

 shoe from Canton ; nests of the kind used to make soup of, and a' 

 Chinese fan six feet long; bits of asbestos, belts of wampum, 

 stuffed birds and feathers from the Friendly Islands, scalps, tom- 

 ahawks, and long lines of portraits of great men of the Revolu- 

 tionary War. To visit the Museum, to wander through the rooms, 

 play upon the organ, examine the rude electrical machine, and 

 have a profile drawn by the physiognomitian, were pleasures 

 from which no stranger to the city ever refrained." 



Dr. Hare's oxyhydrogen blow-pipe was shown in this Museum 

 by Mr. Rubens Peale as early as 1810. 



The Baltimore Museum was managed by Rembrandt Peale, 

 and was in existence as early as 1815 and as late as 1830.* 



Earlier efforts were made, however, in Philadelphia. Dr. 

 Chovet, of that city, had a collection of wax anatomical models 

 made by him in Europe, and Prof. John Morgan, of the Univer- 

 sity of Pennsylvania, who learned his methods from the Hunters 

 in London and Su6 in Paris, was also forming such a collection 

 before the Revolution. f 



The Columbian Museum and Turrell's Museum, in Boston, 

 are spoken of in the annals of the day, and there was a small 

 collection in the attic of the State House in Hartford. 



*" Baltimore has a handsome museum superintended by one of the 

 Peale family, well known for their devotion to natural science and to 

 works of art. It is not their fault if the specimens which they are enabled 

 to display in the latter department are very inferior to their splendid ex- 

 hibitions in the former."— Mrs. Trollope, Domestic Manners of the 

 Americans. London, 1831. 



t Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc, ii, p. 366. 



