MELVILI. : DIARY OF MR. LOVELL REEVE. 349 



homes except at night. We spent the evening, and many future 

 evenings, pleasantly together, over a cabinet richly laden with con- 

 chological rarities, collected by stealth, as opportunity served, among 

 the shell dealers and sailors' homes in the vicinity of the docks; well 

 do I remember the delight with which I used to Ci box Harry" (our slang 

 term for putting up the shop shutters), and hurry off to Fetter Lane. 

 What a good tempered and intelligent fellow was Walker! How he 

 could talk up to the last expiring minute of my time about his shells, 

 not as a fusty old collector of ornamental toys, but as a genuine 

 naturalist, showing me how that the mollusc, the animal inhabitant, 

 had the widest and most varied range of habitation of all moving 

 creatures, living at great depths and heights, in almost all latitudes, 

 how that it lives both in and out of water, and is known to swim, dive, 

 float, bore, crawl, leap, climb, and possess, in short, the faculties of 

 almost every other animal but that of flying. With this encourage- 

 ment I turned collector myself. My cabinet was a deal box about 

 two feet square, fitted with sliding boards, and I kept it in my bedroom, 

 a back attic with a low bent roof, and square latticed window 

 opening over the famous Belle Sauvage yard. Many an early hour 

 did I spend at that window looking now at my shells, then at the 

 arriving mails. Who does not remember Robert Nelson and the 

 smart four horse coaches of the once noted Belle Sauvage ? How 

 merrily the guards sounded their horns. And what frequent customers 

 at our shop were these same guards and coachmen. There was old 

 Walter of the Cambridge Star, Tom Cross of the Lynn Rover, Bill 

 Neck-o'-Nothing of the Devonport Mail, Knowing Jim of the York 

 House, Bath, Harry Horton of the Birmingham Tallyho, brother of 

 Priscilla Horton, the actress, afterwards Mrs. German Reed, whose 

 lively laugh one could hear ere he turned the corner of the Old Bailey, 

 and a host of other jovial spirits. Where be their gibes now, their 

 gambols, their songs, their flashes of merriment ! An incident 

 occurred about this time which . . (Here the MS. ends abruptly). 



EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF MR. LOVELL REEVE 



in 1849. 



January 8th. — Evening occupied in selecting specimens from the 

 duplicates of species of shells collected by Sir E. Belcher during the 

 expedition of the "Samarang," to send to my kind friend Thos. Lombe 

 Taylor, Esq., of Starston, Norfolk. Few amateur conchologists have 

 collected shells with more liberality or intelligence. He indulges the 

 pursuit with an honourable zeal to do suit and service to science, and 

 his cabinet will be one of the most complete in this country. How 

 sad it is that the collection of shells in the British Museum is not 



