Notes on the types of some pulmonate shells from the Scheepmaker collection, now in the Amsterdam Zoological Museum

In the first moiety of the 19-th century there lived at Amsterdam a schoolmaster, G. Scheepmaker Wzn., who possessed an extensive cabinet of shells, famous among contemporary collectors for the various rare objects from China, Australia, Madagascar and North America. The owner entertained relations in the shell branch with many correspondents, several of them residing in the Malay Archipelago. From these collectors he obtained the material for his wonderful collection, and, as there now and then turned up new species among their shipments, Scheepmaker, being only an amateur, distributed these novelties to well-known conchologists of the time for description. Most of the type specimens, if not all, were claimed back again, thus rendering the Scheepmaker collection so much the more valuable. After the death of the owner the Scheepmaker collection was sold (Catalogus van eene zeer belangrijke boekverzameling, .... gedeeltelijk nagelaten door den .... Heer G. Scheepmaker Wzn., etc. .... Conchyliologisch Kabinet .... 24, 25 en 26 Januarij 1855). The catalogue (a copy of which is preserved in the Library of the Dutch Publishers and Booksellers Society at Amsterdam) gives only a very superficial description of the Cabinet, a few genera being mentioned without further details. It is announced that the cabinet is to be sold ”en bloc”, but I doubt whether this was the case after all.