ALFRED BELL.
213
Although he had completed his 90th year it could not be
said that he died of old age. Only a few months before his
death he travelled alone to London and Cambridge, visited
some of his beloved Museums, and on the return journey rode
from Bury St. Edmunds to Ipswich in a motor bus! He passed
away in the full possession cf his mental powers, calmly and
untroubled, having made every provision within his power for
the disposition of his papers and specimens.
His mental powers were considerable and, despite the per-
functory nature of the middle class schooling of his youth, he
was widely read and well informed on archaeological and historical
matters, while few men probably had a more intimate knowledge
of fossils generally. Genial and cheerful in temperament, he
was to the end always interested to hear what was moving in the
scientific world. A great lover of children and young people,
he delighted to interest them in his own hobbies, and he will long
be remembered by many whose footsteps he first directed into
the paths of geological study.
Amongst his papers to which the present writer has had access
was found a list of papers published by him between 1865 and
1925, over 70 in number; while the list of writers who have
referred to or incorporated his work is considerable. It was
characteristic of him that in the closing hours of his life his one
anxiety seemed to be as to the proofs of his paper on the Manx-
land shells now in the press, and his last injunction, shortly before
he breathed his last, was a repetition of his wishes concerning
the forwarding of certain scientific MSS. to the British Museum,
and of all his Oyster books and papers to the Ipswich Museum
where his collections are preserved.1 For some years previous
to his death he had been in receipt of a small pension from the
Murdock Trust, and his work for geological science had also been
recognized by a grant from the Murchison Fund. The funeral
took place at Bramford Church, on the outskirts of Ipswich, and
was attended by Sir Sidney Harmer, of the British Museum, and
by representatives of the Ipswich Museum and Natural History
Society.
G.M.
1. Specimens illustrating his important article on "British Oysters," which appeared in the
Essex Naturalist, xix., pp. 183-221, are preserved in the Essex Museum at Stratford, which
also possesses many Red Crag fossils of Mr. A. Bell's.