12 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



"the white) under the window ledges, and once we 

 "found on the doorstep a very large moth with light 

 '* brown deflected wings, which Aunt Bell took for her 

 "cabinet. I presume it was one of the eggers. A 

 "little later I found, at very low springtides, around 

 " Poole quays, the common forms of Actinia mesem- 

 ^' bryaiithemum, but I think no other species of sea- 

 " anemone. Aunt Bell taught me their name of 

 '^Actinia, and suggested that I should keep them alive 

 "in a vessel of sea-water. I recollect finding a very 

 "showy specimen of the strawberry variety, round by 

 " Oakley's Quay. It was too much trouble to get fresh 

 " sea-water, and there was nothing known in those days 

 " of aquarian philosophy, so the poor things were kept 

 " involved in their mucus until the water stank and they 

 "had to be thrown away. I well recollect them stand- 

 " ing in jugs of sea-water in the kitchen window." 

 To "Aunt Bell," then, belongs the distinction of having 

 been the first person to suggest the preservation of living 

 animals in aquaria of sea-water. This was Susan, the 

 fourth and by far the most intellectual of the children of 

 William Gosse ; she was remarkable for her gracious 

 sentimental manners, and for a devotion to science, then so 

 rare in a woman as to be almost unique. She had been born 

 in 1752, had in 1788 married Mr. Bell, a surgeon of Poole, 

 and was the mother of Thomas Bell, afterwards an F.R.S. 

 and a distinguished zoologist. From this cousin my 

 father in later life received much sympathy, but they did 

 not meet in the youth of the latter. Thomas Bell was 

 eighteen years my father's senior, and left Poole for Guy's 

 Hospital in 1 81 3. At home in Skinner Street, the early 

 partiality for animals was not welcomed so warmly as by 

 Aunt Bell :— 



" Constitution Hill, not quite two miles from Poole, on 



