Tee) BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
other half going to P. T. Barnum’s American Museum, New York, © 
where it was consumed by fire on the thirteenth of July, 1865. 
That little of value in the shape of natural history specimens accrued _ 
to the Boston Museum up to the time of the Peale Museum purchase 
scarcely admits of a doubt. The stuff received before that time was 
contributed by museums that partook partly of a dime museum, 
partly of a vaudeville show.' Among the announcements made by 
the proprietor of the Columbian Museum in the Boston Centinel news- 
paper in 1797 I find the two following, which will serve to show the 
character of those primitive places of amusement whose property 
went to form the nucleus of the Boston Museum collection:— 
[Nov. 29, 1797.] 
LATE ADDITIONS TO THE 
Columbian Museum, 
Head of the Mall, Boston. 
Mr. Bowen informs the Public, That, he has purchased Mr. Paff’s much 
admired Exhibition of CONCERT CLOCKS, which are placed at the head 
of the Museum Hall, as a valuable and pleasing addition to that very extensive 
Repository of CuRIOsITIES. 
1. Canary Birp, which sings a variety of beautiful Songs, Minuets, 
Marches, &e. as natural as life. 2. A company of Automaton Figures, which 
dance to the music of a Harpsichord. 3. Three figures which play the Organ 
and Clarinet, in Concert. 4. Three figures which play the Harpsichord and 
Hautboys in concert. 5. King Herod beheading John the Baptist, and his 
daughter holding a charger to receive the head. 6. A Chimney Sweep, and 
his boy, on the top of a chimney. 7. Three figures which strike the hours 
and quarters. 8. A butcher killing an Ox. 
The above CONCERT CLOCKS have been exhibited in New-York, with 
universal applause, and are well worthy the attention of the Citizens of Boston, 
and the public in general. 
The Museum also contains the most extensive Collection of ELEGANT 
PAINTINGS, that ever was exhibited in the United States, some of which are 
10 by 12 feet, elegantly framed, and valued from 500 to 1000 Dollars each. 
Also, a collection of wpwards of 
50 elegant Figures of W A X-W ORK, large as life, among which are the 
following (the most interesting) viz. 
1 The lack of appreciation of natural history by the American public during the 
early part of the last century appears in Scudder’s avowal to Wilson that the “Witch 
of Endor” and ‘‘Potiphar’s Wife’’ brought ten dollars to his museum where the 
natural history brought one. Scudder was the founder of the old American Museum 
of New York (Dunlap’s History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the 
United States, 1834, 2, p. 199). 
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