Born in East-Frisia, Seba moved to Amsterdam as an apprentice and opened around 1700 a pharmacy near the harbour. Seba asked sailors and ship surgeons to bring exotic plants and animal products he could use for preparing drugs. Seba also started to collect snakes, birds, insects, shells and lizards in his house. From 1711 he delivered drugs to the Russian court in Saint Petersburg and sometimes accepted fresh ginger as payment. Seba promoted his collection with the head-physician to the tsar, Robert Arskine, and early 1716 Peter the Great bought the complete collection. Seven months later seventeen trunks arrived in Russia. With Seba as an intermediate, Frederik Ruysch, a famous botanist, again sold his collection to the tsar. A special building was designed, and from 1728 till 1830 both collections were exposed in the Kunstkammer. With the acquisition of the two collections, the Russian Academy of Sciences had two modern, very well-documented collections at its disposal.
Full Title:
Locupletissimi rerum naturalium thesauri accurata descriptio, et iconibus artificiosissimis expressio, per universam physices historiam :opus, cui, in hoc rerum genere, nullum par exstitit /ex toto terrarum orbe collegit, digessit, descripsit, et depingendum curavit Albertus Seba ...
By : Seba, Albert,1665-1736.
view online at Botanicus, a freely accessible portal to historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library.
