Vol / 8 XVI ] Stone, Some Philadelphia Collections and Collectors. I 69 



stages of museum proper, lecture hall, music hall, and variety 

 stage, seems to have been so gradual that the final closing of 

 the enterprise caused little comment. No record has been 

 kept of the disposal of the specimens, and all efforts to trace the 

 history of the Wilson and Say types have proved futile. All that 

 seems to be known is that part of the natural history material 

 was purchased by P. T. Barnum and was later burnt in his mem- 

 orable fire in New York while other parts of the collections went 

 to Boston, Baltimore, and Lancaster. The only types from the 

 Peale collections that have been preserved, so far as I am aware, 

 are Wilson's Broad-winged Hawk and Mississippi Kite, both of 

 which are in the Philadelphia Academy labelled as having been 

 obtained by exchange from Peale's Museum. 



By 1S25 the Academy of Natural Sciences was sharing the 

 attention of the scientific world with the older Museum of Peale. 

 It had become firmly established and was doing excellent work, 

 not only in ornithology but in many other branches, and had 

 enrolled in its membership all the prominent American natura- 

 lists of the time, many of whom are familiar to us to-day as 

 pioneers in their respective specialties. 



Curiously enough there is preserved an account of a meeting 

 of the Academy held at this time, written by Dr. Edmund Porter 

 of Frenchtown, N. J., in a letter to Dr. Thomas Miner of Haddam, 

 Conn., dated Oct. 25, 1825, from which we can gain some idea of 

 the personnel of the Academy meetings of this period. Dr. Porter 

 writes: "A few evenings since I was associated with a society 

 of gentlemen, members of the Academy of Natural Sciences. 

 There were present fifteen or twenty. Among the number was 

 La Suer, Rafanesque, Say, Peale, Pattison, Harlan and Chas. 

 Lucien Bonaparte. 



" Among this collection life was most strikingly exemplified. — 

 La Suer, with a countenance weather-beaten and worn, looked on, 

 for the muscles of his ironbound visage seemed as incapable of 

 motion, as those on the medals, struck in the age of Julius 

 Caesar. Rafanesque has a fine black eye, rather bald, and black 

 hair, and withal is rather corpulent. I was informed that he was 

 a native of Constantinople. At present he lives in Kentucky. 

 Dr. Harlan is a spruce young man and has written a book. 



