"The museum is the largest, most valuable, and best arranged in the United States. It comprises no less than seven different museums, to which has been added the present year, besides the constant daily accumulation of articles, one half of the celebrated Peale's Philadelphia Museum, swelling the already immense collection to upwards of half a million articles, the greatest amount of objects of interest to be found together at any one place in America; and an entirely new hall of wax statuary.... and the immense collection of birds, beasts, fish, insects and reptiles;... paintings, engravings and statuary; ... Egyptian mummies, ... family of Peruvian mummies; the duck-billed platypus;... the curious half-fish, half-human Fejee Mermaid;... elephants and ourang-outangs..."〔Newspaper advertisement for the Boston Museum. The Barre Patriot. Barre, Vermont: 15 September 1850.〕