212
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
to the school cabinets of scientific and educational objects sent
out by that firm. He also catalogued part of the Brassey
collection, and described the corals brought home from the
voyage of the Sunbeam. Advancing age at length brought him
into very reduced circumstances, but fortunately his position
became known to the late Mr. F. W. Harmer, who was engaged
in the preparation of his Monograph on the Pliocene Mollusca;
with the happy result that the last fifteen years of the old collec-
tor's life were passed in happy surroundings and employed in
congenial work, wherein his great knowledge of the Pliocene
fauna was put to most valuable use. The association between
the two ardent workers on the Crag deposits was only terminated
by Mr. Harmer's death in 1923. After Mr. Harmer's decease
Alfred Bell retired to Ipswich, where, amongst old friends, and
in close touch with the Museum, where he did a considerable
amount of work, and to which he contributed many important
specimens, the old man spent his closing days in peace and
comfort.
In the preface to the last part of the "Pliocene Mollusca,"
issued after Mr. Harmer's death, Alfred Bell wrote:—"The late
author of this Monograph realized his wish to complete his
account of the Pliocene gasteropoda before his death. . .
We had proposed to write a joint memoir on the bivalves, but
it was not to be. The large series of Astartes which Mr. Harmer
intended to work out, and such other new forms as we possessed
(excluding oysters) are in the British Museum (Natural History)
to which the greater part of the collection has been given. The
figured specimens corresponding with the Monograph as pub-
lished are, however, in the Sedgwick Museum, at Cambridge.
The oysters, of which I have photographs of sixty well-marked
forms (Pliocene, Pleistocene and Recent) are now being worked
out by myself."
This work Alfred Bell continued as opportunity offered
down to the time of his death. He had already, in 1920, con-
tributed a valuable paper on "British Oysters: Past and Pre-
sent" to The Essex Naturalist (vol. xix., pp. 183-221), and
he continued to collect, through correspondents and friends,
evidence relating to this little studied and difficult group of
mollusca.