No. 3. — Relics of Peak's Museum. 

 By Walter Faxon. 



The zoological collection of the Boston Museum, which had been 

 given to the Boston Society of Natural History in 1893 and 1899, was 

 transferred in 1914 to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cam- 

 bridge. It is generally understood that this collection consisted 

 chiefly of the moiety of the old Philadelphia or Peale Museum prop- 

 erty purchased by Moses Kimball in 1850, after the dissolution of 

 that institution in 1846. Since the Peale Museum was the repository 

 of a large number of the types of species described by C. L. Bonaparte, 

 Richard Harlan, George Ord, Thomas Say, and Alexander Wilson, 

 it would seem that a careful study of this material might reveal some 

 of these much-desired types. I have lately examined the North 

 American birds in the collection, with a view to the recovery of speci- 

 mens described and figured by Wilson in his "American Ornithology," 

 1808-1814. On account of the total loss of the original Peale Museum 

 labels, the task has been a difficult one, and the results achieved are 

 meagTe and often vitiated by uncertainty ; but such as they are, they 

 are placed on record in this paper. 



Since Wilson had no training as an artist, he found it expedient to 

 draw a bird after it had assumed a definite form and attitude by being 

 stuffed and mounted, often by his own hands. We know this not 

 only by tradition but also by the written testimony of the artist 

 Charles R. Leslie. In his "Autobiographical RepoUections,"^ 1, 

 p. 245 (Amer. ed., p. 163), Leslie says: — 



"Wilson was engaged by Mr. Bradford as tutor to his sons, and as editor 

 of the American edition of 'Ree's Cj'clopsedia'; while at the same time he was 

 advancing his Ornithology for publication. I assisted him to colour some 

 of its first plates. We worked from birds which he had shot and stuffed, and 

 I well remember the extreme accuracy of his drawings, and how carefully he 

 had counted the number of scales on the tiny legs and feet of his subject." 



Wilson usuall}' refers to a Peale Museum specimen by its catalogue 

 number at the beginning of his description of each species. Seventy- 

 one out of about eighty-five of the birds described by him under new 



I Autobiographical Recollections. By the late Charles Robert Leslie, R. A. Eclitei 

 . . . .by Tom Taylor. In two volumes. London: John Murray, 1860. American 

 Edition in one vol., Boston: Ticknor and Fields, ISGO. 



