Friday, January 21, 2011

Hippopotamus and Lion

Sat 22 Jan 1780. I spent an hour or two very agreeably in Sir Ashton Lever’s Museum. It does not equal the British Museum in size, nor is it constructed on so large a plan, as it contains no manuscripts, no books, no antiquities, nor any remarkable works of art. But I believe, for natural curiosities, it is not excelled by any museum in Europe. And all the beasts, birds, reptiles, and insects, are admirable well ranged and preserved. So that if you saw many of them elsewhere, you would imagine, they were alive! The hippopotamus, in particular, looks as fierce as if he was just coming out of the river, and the old lion appears as formidable now as when he was stalking in the Tower