Dear all,
Some time ago someone asked me if we still had (Amsterdam or Leiden) a polychaete type attributed to the collection of William V. The only worm Seba ever described was Penicillum marinum, nowadays Spirobranchus giganteus, and I should know, but maybe I am mistaken and was it a more general enquiry.
Anyhow, cleaning out the remnants of my move to Naturalis I came across the following :
Pieters, F.F.J.M., 1980. Notes on the menagerie and zoological cabinet of Stadholder William V of Holland, directed by Aernout Vosmaer. J. Soc. Biblphy nat. Hist. 9 (4): 539-563.
In her very readable story she refers to an even more relevant paper:
Boeseman, M., 1970. The vicissitudes and dispersal of Albertus Seba's zoological specimens. Zool. Meded. Leiden 44 (13) :177-206.
Reading the first for a second time and scanning the other diagonally I found reference to one "worm", not necessarily the one discussed above, sold, but it is not clear where that ended. Anyhow, the history of that collection is far too complicated to be summarized other than that it was spread over St. Petersburg, London, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden and a few more cities. Partly since Napoleon took most of the collection to Paris, and some was returned later (although that return also included possible Lamarckian or Cuvierian material), partly since collections were sold in auctions. So theoretically we might have material in our combined collections, but anyone interested is advised to read the two mentioned papers first in the hope to find better cues for the final resting places of collection parts.
Wormly,
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