There were no typewriters in those days; it was all honest, strenuous copying from mid-day sometimes till night. Still much of the work was of absorbing interest, and the labour was lightened by delightful companionship. Staveley was the head of the department, a right good fellow, and a fine skater of the days when the members of the Skating Club used to disport themselves in the Regent’s Park, or on the Serpentine, in tail coats and top hats; Croker Pennell, a great character, was second; Scott Gifford, a dear memory (great friend of Goldsmid and Jenny Lind, whom I heard sing at his house); Henry Eliot, the late Lord St. Germans, Bobsy Meade—both of them most justly popular. Later my old friend, W. A. Cockerell, happily still alive. It would have been difficult to find a more sympathetic crew. Among the other colleagues we had John Bidwell, clever, agreeable, and much loved by all who knew him well; Johnnie Woodford, a handsome tenorino, an intimate friend, like myself, of Mario and Grisi, and much behind the scenes of Covent Garden; Beauty Stephens a strange compound of wit and muddleheadedness, with a wonderful gift of hitting off a character in a couple of words; Anderson, rather solid and solemn, very popular on the steps of the Rag, to which it always seemed as if he ought to have belonged—indeed that wicked Stephens said of him that he “would have been a heavy dragoon, only there was no regiment heavy enough for him;” cranky little Cavendish, whose memoirs have been published, and to whom, when he came back to work after a short illness, and complained that he was not quite himself yet, John Bidwell said rather cruelly: “Well, Dish! don’t you think that might perhaps be an improvement!” There were a score or more of others, now alas! gone, all of whom have left pleasant memories behind them. Of course, in so large a zoological collection there were some who did not belong to the Phœnix tribe; we had our apes and we had our bears; but in looking back upon those happy old days I claim the privilege of the sun-dial, and among the hours record only the serene.