OCR Text |
Show 1892.] IN THE LIDTH DE JEUDE COLLECTION. 311 have been acquired by our own Museum; nor am I able to trace where they have gone. Before proceeding to a detailed account of m y identifications, I propose to give such scraps of historical evidence about the Seba and Lidth de Jeude collections as I have been able to get together, and I hope that these in course of time will be supplemented by other similar items of information. Firstly, from the preface to the fourth volume of the ' Thesaurus' we learn that, although Seba himself died in 1736, the collection was not dispersed until 1752, when it was sold by public auction in Amsterdam. It next, probably not very long afterwards1, passed into the possession of the Stadtholder, William V. of Holland, or at least of his guardians, he being a boy of four at the time of the sale. But when the French occupied Holland and the Stadtholder fled in 1795, the invaders, as was their habit in regard to objects of art and science, brought back with them to Paris certain of the specimens of the Stadtholder's collection. Of these, or at least of the Mammals, a list has most fortunately been preserved in the Archives of the Paris Museum, a copy of which I owe to the kindness of Prof. A . Milne-Edwards. This list, however (see below p. 317), shows that no such specimens as are now attempted to be identified went to Paris at that time. Indeed, such specimens as these animals in spirit would not have been very attractive to the French military and unscientific collectors, and they therefore, no doubt, remained in Holland, but in whose hands I cannot trace. The next reference is one which, so far as it goes, is antagonistic to the idea of any of Seba's spirit-specimens having been preserved until now, and it deserves, therefore, careful consideration. In 1853 Temminck, the famous head of the Leyden Museum, made the two following statements2:- " Seba rassemblait, sans choix ni ordre systematique, toutes sortes d'objets curieux ; parmi les mammiferes, les monstres et les foetus etaient les plus nombreux ; toute sa collection, conservee a l'esprit de vin dans des bocaux de verre, etait, apres sa mort, en grande partie deterioree." And :- " II y a plusieurs annees (cinquante ans a peu-pres) que je lis l'acquisition de quelques bocaux, provenant des debris des collections de Seba; dans ce nombre se trouvait un tres-jeune individu de notre Spiniger ; il etait totalement decolore et a peine reconnaissable. Ce sujet, qu'on a monte, se trouve dans nos galeries. C'est peut-etre l'individu type du Cervus perpusillus ou bien de Cervus per-gracilis de Seba." 1 Perhaps Pallas visited Amsterdam in the interval, for in 1797 (Nov. Glires, p. 314) he says of Mus longipes (Seba, vol. ii. plate xxix. fig. 2 ) : " vidi quondam Amstelodami e Museo ISebas reliquum specimen in collectione D N . Chr. Paul Meier, mercatoris." Later on he speaks of this specimen as having been a skin, so that it could not be one of our specimens, but might have been one of the " Deux Gerboises de la petite espece" that went to Paris (see below, p. 317). 2 Esq. Z. Guin. pp. 202, 203 (1853). |