228 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



coloured by the author. In the preface to this work, Philip 

 Gosse took up a position which was new to the world of 

 zoologists. " Natural history," he boldly declared, " is far 

 too much a science of dead things ; a necrology. It is 

 mainly conversant with dry skins, furred or feathered, 

 blackened, shrivelled, and hay-stuffed ; with objects, some 

 admirably beautiful, some hideously ugly, impaled on pins, 

 and arranged in rows in cork drawers ; with uncouth forms, 

 disgusting to sight and smell, bleached and shrunken, 

 suspended by threads and immersed in spirit (in defiance 

 of the aphorism, that ' he who is born to be hanged will 

 never be drowned') in glass bottles. These distorted 

 things are described ; their scales, plates, feathers counted ; 

 their forms copied, all shrivelled and stiffened as they 

 are ; . . . their limbs, members, and organs measured, and 

 the results recorded in thousandths of an inch ; two names 

 are criven to every one ; the whole is enveloped in a 

 mystic cloud of Gr^eco-Latino-English phraseology (often 

 barbaric enough) ; and this is natural history ! " 



The tradition thus scornfully condemned was that which 

 it was the writer's peculiar function to break through. 

 And he was not, like so many reformers, ready to tear 

 down without having any fresh materials or the design for 

 a new edifice. This is how, in the elegant preface to the 

 Naturalists Sojmr?i, he describes the science of zoology as 

 he fain would see it conducted : — 



"That alone is worthy to be called natural history 

 " which investigates and records the condition of living 

 "things, of things in a state of nature; if animals, of 

 ''livmg animals: — which tells of their 'sayings and 

 " doings,' their varied notes and utterances, songs and 

 " cries ; their actions in ease, and under the pressure of 

 " circumstances ; their affections and passions towards 

 " their young, towards each other, towards other animals, 



