3748 The Zoologist — November, 1873. 



in his pleasant autobiography, largely assisted his speedy acquisi- 

 tion of the German language in after years. Would that they had 

 the same effect on me ! Mr. Lloyd's " school days" might possibly 

 have furnished matter for a narrative as interesting as those of Tom 

 Brown, but he has only given us a very small instalment of such a 

 narrative, and I believe even that would have been vt^ithheld had it 

 not been for the accidental finding a crab, a circumstance that 

 incidentally leads us to an introduction to his school and school- 

 master in the year 1833. 



" I smuggled the crab into the school-room," says Mr. Lloyd, " in order 

 to get the schoolmaster, Humphrey, the learned man of the place, to tell me 

 all about it. He was a little tbin old man, with a yellow, shruukeu face, 

 yellow teeth, and yellow finger-nails, was dressed in a black velvet coat, 

 waistcoat, and knee-breeches, with blacli, stockings and huge shoes. He 

 knew no English ; and at intervals throughout the day smoked very coarse 

 tobacco from a short black pipe in the school- room, which was also the 

 dissenting chapel of the place. There were no writing-desks or tables of 

 any kind, but the scholars knelt on the rubble-floor, and used as desks the deal 

 forms on which the congregation sat on Sundays. Humphrey's scholastic 

 fees were all paid in kind : some of the lads brought corn, or oatmeal, or 

 flour, or wool, or bacon, and I remember once trying to carry on my head 

 my payment, a big square lump of coal ; but it was too heavy, and another 

 boy kindly let me carry his payment of a lump of butter, and he, being 

 stronger, conveyed my coal. Cheese was a luxury known only to the 

 rich : money was seldom seen in the form of coin, and farthings never. 

 I did not take my crab to school as a matter of payment, nor yet for play 

 or idle curiosity, but really and truly to learn something about it from the 

 only person whom I thought could give me help, and his reply was, ' Ah, 

 William Bach ! only learned men in London can give information on such 

 things,' and he smoked his pipe vigorously, and gave me permission to put 

 the crab away during school-time in the chapel pulpit, to be out of the 

 reach of the boys." 



In 1837 Mr. Lloyd returned to London, and visited the 

 Zoological Gardens, which proved a constant source of amusement 

 and interest to him whenever he obtained a holiday : this continued 

 for many years, during which his reading and learning, equally 

 sources of instruction and amusement, seemed incessant and most 

 miscellaneous. 



In 1838 he obtained the exalted post of errand boy at Messrs. 

 Pontifex and Wood, engineers, of Shoe-lane, and stayed in this 

 place for three years. Unlike any other errand boys whom 1 have 



