Species Sebaea burchellii

For Albertus Seba (1665–1736), Dutch pharmacist, zoologist and naturalist. In 1700, he opened an ‘apothecary shop’ in Amsterdam and collected exotic plants and animal products from sailors and ship surgeons from which he could make ‘medicines’. In 1716, he sold his first collection (as well as the Dutch botanist Frederik Ruysch’s collection) to the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, on his visit to the Netherlands. Seba immediately set about building an even larger collection. In 1734, he published his magnificently illustrated four-volume Thesaurus (1734, 1735), with 446 plates (2 volumes published posthumously), which displays marine animals, insects and reptiles. Linnaeus must have seen this collection when he visited Seba twice in 1735. Seba became a Fellow of Royal Society in 1728.