240 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



description. In the Devonshire Coast he has given an 

 eloquent account of his successive discoveries, and of the 

 ardour with which he threw himself into the work of 

 exploration. The beautiful Devonshire cup-coral {Caryo- 

 phyllia Smithii) had long been known as a skeleton in the 

 drawers of museums ; he was fortunate enough to find it 

 in profusion, throwing upwards its globose white tentacles, 

 and covering with its fawn-coloured flesh the granular plates 

 of its coral structure. In September he made a discovery 

 of extraordinary interest, and in a manner so characteristic 

 that I give his own account of the incident : — 



" It was a spring tide, and the water had receded 

 " lower than I had seen it since I had been at the place. 

 " I was searching among the extremely rugged rocks 

 "that run out from the tunnels, forming walls and 

 "pinnacles of dangerous abruptness, with deep, almost 

 " inaccessible cavities between. Into one of these, at 

 "the very verge of the water, I managed to scramble 

 " down ; and found, round a corner, a sort of oblong 

 "basin, about ten feet long, in which the water remained, 

 "a tide-pool of three feet depth in the middle. The 

 "whole concavity of the interior was so smooth that I 

 "could find no resting-place for my foot in order to 

 " examine it ; though the sides, all covered with the 

 " pink lichen-like coralline, and bristling with laminariae 

 " and zoophytes, looked so tempting that I walked round 

 "and round, reluctant to leave it. At last I fairly 

 ** stripped, though it was blowing very cold, and jumped 

 " in. I had examined a good many things, of which the 

 " only novelty was the pretty narrow fronds of Fliistra 

 '' chartacea in some abundance, and was just about to 

 " come out, when my eye rested on what I at once saw 

 " to be a madrepore, but of an unusual colour, a most 

 " refulgent orange." 



