124 PULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
the living maners as they rise’”’ Has ever been held, not only allowable, but meri- — 
torious; so it is to be hoped the same wish to please and entertain, will in the ‘ 
present case, be viewed at least with candor. 
Mr. Philip Woods of the older Boston or Matket Museum adver- 
tised, March 24, 1805: !— 
A Monstrous Crocodile, which measured when alive 12 feet in length and — 
4 feet around the body — was killed in Egypt, when devouring a black boy; 
which is naturally represented with Mungo in his mouth. 
On June 29, 1805, he designates among the attractions added to his 
show: !— 
The Philadelphia, New York, and Salem beauties and a number of other 
figures, also a number of natural curiosities, among which is the skin of the 
sea-elephant in natural preservation, which measured eighty feet in length 
and six feet around the body. 
The Boston Museum thus derived by direct inheritance the unique 
position which it afterward held among American theatres. Even 
after its dramatic company came to be one of the best in the United 
States, it still offered to its patrons its side-shows of picture-galleries, 
stuffed animals, and chambers of horror in wax-work. Many an old 
Bostonian remembers his Saturday afternoons as a child at the 
‘“Miiseum,”’ — afternoons ending with ice-creams at Copeland’s or 
oysters at Higgins’s, and followed by a restless night perturbed by 
strange dreams of wax images, boa constrictors, and “Aladdin,” or 
“The Forty Thieves,” fused into one composite horror such as never 
was on sea or land. Perhaps some may recall the taxidermic “artist” 
who stood ready to set up a pet canary-bird or kitten “as natural as 
life,” while its owner was assuaging his grief for his lost pet by “seeing 
Warren.” And all this, except the supper and the kitten, for fifteen 
cents! I doubt if children of the present time can get so much for 
their mothers’ money. 
Peale’s Museum was an institution of a very different kind from its 
Boston contemporaries,— at least during its earlier period under the 
management of itsfounder. Charles Willson Peale? — artist, soldier, 
1 Brayley,./. c. 
2See Biographical Sketch of Charles Willson Peale. [By Rembrandt Peale}. < 
Doughty’s Cabinet of Natural History, 1, p. i-vii, portr., Philadelphia: 1830. Lieber’s 
Encyclopedia Americana, 9, p. 571-572, Philadelphia: 1832. Dunlap’s History of the 
Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1, p. 136-142, New York: 
1834. Peale’s Museum. By Harold Sellers Colton.< Popular Science Monthly, 5, 
Sept., 1909, p. 221-238. 
