220 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



found the task a more difficult one than he had antici- 

 pated. It hung around his neck hke a weight, and it 

 was not until 1850 that he published what is perhaps the 

 most perfunctory of all his longer writings. Three, if not 

 four, editions of this work were, however, exhausted. In 

 July the Mammalia was issued ; and in September he was 

 already beginning, for another firm of publishers, his 

 Popular British Ornithology, a work intended as a sort of 

 bird-calendar for the instruction of young naturalists, a 

 guide for use through the English bird-year. This boolc, 

 which is illustrated by a variety of exquisite coloured 

 plates, drawn and lithographed by the author, was pecu- 

 liarly the labour of his betrothal, since he wrote his first 

 page the day before he proposed to Miss Emily Bowes, 

 and the last on the night preceding his marriage. In 

 designing and colouring the illustrations, he mainly drew 

 from the specimens in the British Museum. Even in work 

 so modest as this was, he was unwilling to copy the 

 observations of others whenever it was in his power to 

 give an impression of his own, and he was in the habit 

 of remarking that, however hackneyed an animal may 

 seem to be, the labour of describing or copying it minutely 

 at first hand will reveal some characteristic in it which has 

 escaped previous observers. This is, no doubt, far less 

 true to-day, when the illustration of natural objects has 

 been carried to so great a pitch of perfection, than it was 

 fifty years ago, w^hen all but the best illustrations were of a 

 very rough character. 



From Tottenham, on November 22, 1848, he brought 

 home his bride to the little house in Trafalgar Terrace 

 without so much as a single day's honeymoon. He 

 immediately took up again the suspended task of The 

 History of the Jews, which, however, occupied him for many 

 more months. The next year was one of extreme seclu- 



