1892.] SPECIMENS FORMERLY IN THE JEUDE COLLECTION. 309, 



2. On the probable Identity of certain Specimens, formerly 

 in the Lidth de Jeude Collection, and now in the 

 British Museum, with those figured by Albert Seba in 

 his ' Thesaurus ' of 1734. By Oldfield Thomas. 



[Eeceived April 5, 1892.] 



In 1867 the British Museum purchased, through the late Mr. R , 

 Damon, a large quantity of zoological specimens of ail sorts out of 

 the collection of Prof. Th. van Lidth de Jeude of Utrecht. Of the 

 mammals, about 280 are preserved entire in old-fashioned glass 

 jars with red wax tops, and 330 are skulls. 



In the well-known folio work by Albert Seba, ' Locupletissimus 

 rerum naturalium Thesaurus,' vol. i., there is a frontispiece with the 

 author's portrait, and behind him are specimens in bottles so 

 exactly like those of the Lidth de Jeude collection as to have 

 attracted my attention to the circumstance ; and although it lias 

 since proved that such bottles were used by Lidth de Jeude himself 

 and others, yet as the suspicion thus aroused was confirmed by my 

 finding some of the specimens to be similar to the animals figured 

 by Seba in this work, a thorough examination has been made, with 

 the startling and unhoped for result of showing that many of these 

 Lidth de Jeude specimens are actually the very individual examples 

 figured by Seba. Of course, one or two, or even five or six cases 

 of resemblance might have been put down to accidental coinci- 

 dences, but so large a number prove to correspond in every way 

 to Seba's figures and descriptions, that I no longer have a doubt 

 as to their being really Seba's specimens, carefully preserved by 

 their successive possessors in the original hermetically sealed jars 

 in which he placed them. Naturally, in the course of time, many 

 have been lost, others have deteriorated and been destroyed, and 

 others again have been alienated in ignorance of their special value 

 and interest. But in spite of all, enough remain to raise their 

 resemblance to Seba's figures far beyond the region of accidenfal 

 coincidence, and, as each specimen identified increases the proba- 

 bilities for the identification of the rest, in the aggregate to amount 

 practically to a proof of the opinion now advocated. In fact the 

 whole British Museum collection from other sources could not 

 produce so many close resemblances to Seba's figures as occur in 

 this one collection of Lidth de Jeude. It mav be noted that, 

 judging by the old tickets on the bottles, there appear to be t^i o 

 sets of specimens in the collection — the bottles of the one labelled 

 with large printed numbers, and of the other with manuscript 

 numbers, evidently of an earlier date ; all the cases of asserted 

 identity occur in the latter part of the collection, an evidence in 

 itself that these have some common bond of origin. At the same 

 time the importance of this piece of evidence is unfortunately much 

 weakened by the fact that many of the identified specimens have 



Proc. Zool. Soc— 1892, No. XXII. 22 



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