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Lady Katharine Jane Douglas

 

 

 

 

Lady Katharine Jane Douglas, (4 Jan 1817-30 Sep 1863);  Daughter of Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk. Married 1849, Loftus Tottenham Wigram.

 

 

The British Museum has numerous specimens donated by Lady Douglas/Wigram, including some of the earliest shells collected from Oregon, USA. A NE Pacific chiton species was named in her honor, Katharina tunicata (Wood, 1815), and this genus name Katharina Gray, 1847 was described by the person responsible for mollusks at the museum at that time. (The specific name tunicata is of cause referring to the wide mantle around the foot and the word tunica itself was coined by the influential Umbrian comedy author Titus Maccius Plautus, around 254-184 b.C., who made it from an anagram of the semitic word kituna for underwear (cf. the Greek word chiton, which originally meant an undershirt), at that time used for a body-coat without sleeves made from wool; several expressions has survided through Plautus, e.g. "summa summarum").

 

She died on 30 September 1863, without issue.

 

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