10 



CHAPTER V. 



ALABAMA. 

 1838. 



THE only piece of valuable property which Philip 

 Gosse took with him from Canada was the cabinet 

 of insects which he had had made years before in Hamburg, 

 and which was now tightly stocked with the selected species 

 of six years' incessant labour. The space in it was so 

 limited that he had been fain to use not merely the usual 

 floor of each drawer, but the tops as well, and even the 

 sides. As has been said, the thing had been a cheap affair 

 at first, and none of the drawers being lined with cork, the 

 pins which fastened the insects had to be insecurely thrust 

 into the deal wood itself He had scarcely started from 

 Compton on Mr. Jaques's light travelling waggon when he 

 began to suffer from a mental agony which can scarcely be 

 exaggerated. His poor shaky cabinet, with its frail con- 

 tents, jolting over the hard-frozen roads, rough and desti- 

 tute of snow, began more and more to give forth a rustling 

 and faintly metallic sound which told him only too clearly 

 that the pins were coming loose ; and soon he sat there, 

 in a condition of misery beyond speech or tears, the witness 

 of a catastrophe which he was absolutely powerless to 

 avert, watching in a wretched patience the cabinet, in which 

 the delicate captures of his last years were being ground to 

 dust. 



