COBirders-- My friend Mark Yaeger, Colorado’s pre-imminent bird artist and life-time Pueblo resident, sent me the email below. I believe it fits the guideline our moderator has established and I think many will find it of interest.
Leon Bright – Pueblo
Charles Wilson Peale the founder of the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts and the Philadelphia Museum said this in 1799:
“There is also another unmeaning custom which is still essential for us to get rid of. I mean that of naming subjects of nature, after persons, who have plumed themselves with those childish ideas of being the first discoverers of such thing.” He went on to say naming birds after people should be avoided because it “feeds the vanity of some naturalists without enlightening the science”.
Peale named his children after artists: Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Angelica Kauffman, Sophonisba Angusciola and Titian. It was son Titian who in 1820 shot the Say’s Phoebe near Pueblo that got named after his boss Thomas Say on the Edwin James expedition.
Mark Yaeger
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