200 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



"gloomy recesses. Here and there the course of the 

 " river was dammed up by islets ; some of them mere 

 " masses of dark rock, others adorned with the elegant 

 " waving plumes of the graceful bamboo. But the most 

 " remarkable object was the immense rock called 

 " Gibraltar, which rises on the opposite bank of the 

 " river, from the water's edge, absolutely perpendicular, 

 " to the height of five or six hundred feet ; a broad mass 

 "of limestone, twice as high as St. Paul's." 

 At nightfall the same day, their carriage drove into the 

 streets of Spanish Town. Two or three days later, the 

 friends began a revised list of the birds of Jamaica, the 

 discoveries of each being able to fill up gaps in the expe- 

 rience of the other ; and this was the occupation of each 

 successive evening. On the 17th they finished their list, 

 making out 184 species of birds more or less clearly. Sam 

 was all this time actively engaged on daily excursions, 

 usually alone, and he rarely failed to bring home at night 

 at least one interesting rarity. The next day the friends 

 betook themselves to Kingston, and in the rooms of the 

 Jamaica Society carefully compared their list of birds with 

 that in Robinson's manuscripts. It should here be ex- 

 plained that Dr. Anthony Robinson, a surgeon practising 

 in Jamaica in the middle of the eighteenth century, had 

 left behind him a very valuable mass of information on 

 the zoology and botany of the island, which had been 

 preserved, in five folio volumes, in the archives of the 

 Jamaica Society in Kingston. " The specific descriptions, 

 admeasurements, and details of colouring," Philip Gosse 

 wrote in reference to these collections, " are executed with 

 an elaborate accuracy worthy of a period of science far 

 in advance of that in which Robinson lived, and accom- 

 panying the manuscripts are several volumes of carefully 

 executed drawings, mostly coloured." On March 23, 



