The publication recalls the figure of the world-famous traveler and ethnographer, Jan Kubary, who worked for the Godeffroy Museum in Hamburg. Kubary provided European natural history museums with extremely valuable research materials constituting the basis of the 19th century systematic studies of the animals of Oceania including numerous descriptive types of species new to science. The results of the query of ornithological collections of the Museum and Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw revealed the presence of 17 bird specimens from Oceania collected by Jan Kubary. They were transited to the current collection from the collection of the Warsaw Zoological Cabinet and the Branicki Museum. These specimens are valuable voucher materials for studies in the field of museology and the history of zoology, and, due to the specific method of preparation, currently offer the possibility of conducting systematic research based on genetic data (historical DNA).