Dirk van der Schalk en zijn schelpencollectie

Biographical data is presented on Dirk van der Schalk, lieutenant-colonel in the Dutch East Indian Army, whose whole, or at least partial, very interesting shell collection was aledgedly sold to L.A. Reeve. In a letter to F. McCoy, director of the National Museum of Victoria at Melbourne, dated May 18, 1865, Reeve mentioned a specimen of Conus gloriamaris which he had sold around 25 years ago to T. Norris and was presently in the collection of Mrs. De Burgh. In his letter Reeve stated that he bought the shell at The Hague. It is believed that Reeve was refering here to the Van der Schalk Collection, because at that time Van der Schalk was living in Voorburg near The Hague. Melvill on the other hand stated, that the two specimens of Conus gloriamaris of Reeve came from the collection of the Dutch general Von Ryder (sic). The Reeder Collection was sold on September 30, 1840 in Rotterdam. The Van der Schalk Collection contained two specimens of Conus gloriamaris, which corresponds with the fact, that Reeve also had two specimens of the very rare Conus gloriamaris during that time. According to Melvill one specimen went to the collection of De Burgh (already mentioned above), the other to the collection of T. L. Taylor. According to Dance (1966: 246) the Conus gloriamaris of De Burgh is maintained in the British Museum (Natural History) and the specimen of Taylor in the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff.