DELAWARE VALLEY ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB 5 



many of these have been preserved and are now in the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, while two others, the 

 types of the Broad-winged Hawk and Mississippi Kite, are in the 

 Philadelphia Academy and one, the Cape May Warbler, is in 

 Vassar College. ^ 



Charles Willson Peale withdrew from the active management 

 of the museum in 1808 and retired to his home "Belfield" in 

 Germantown, leaving his sons in control. He died February 

 22, 1827. 



In 1821 he had had the museum company incorporated, the 

 five trustees being with one exception members of his family. 

 Following his death the museum moved in 1828 to the Arcade 

 building on Chestnut Street above Sixth, and in 1838 to a fine 

 building at Ninth and Chestnut, where the Continental Hotel 

 now stands. Here in 1846 financial depression resulted in the 

 failure of the concern which in strenuous efforts to maintain an 

 existence had added vaudeville and other attractions. The 

 collections were sold at auction, the natural history material 

 being largely kept together and exhibited until 1850, when P. T. 

 Barnum and Moses Kimball secured it at sheriff's sale and 

 it went to museums which they maintained in New York and 

 Boston. Most of the specimens were later destroyed by fires 

 which consumed several of Barnum' s establishments. 



Thus ended an enterprise which during the days of its pros- 

 perity exerted a wonderful influence on the development of 

 science in America and to which Charles Lucien Bonaparte 

 refers as ''an enterprise, accomplished alone and unaided, 

 that could hardly have been exceeded under the fostering hand 

 of the most powerful government." ^ The details of the mu- 

 seum's history are fascinating reading and are well worthy of 

 detailed study, but this brief outline will suffice to show us the 

 nature of the environment which surrounded young Titian 

 Ramsay Peale, the subject of the present sketch, and the influ- 

 ence which it must have exerted in shaping his life. 



He was born in 1800 in the Hall of the Philosophical Society. 



> Cf. Faxon. Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. LIX, No. 3, pp. 119-148. 

 ' Amer. Omith. , vol. ii. 



