WORK AT THE SEASHORE. 245 



By the last days of 1852 A Natiiralisfs Ramble on the 

 Devonshire Coast was finished. He was determined that, 

 now that the public had begun to demand his literary 

 work, he would get the profit of it himself. lie there- 

 fore arranged to be his own publisher, and the book 

 was accordingly set up for him by a firm of printers 

 in Bath. It was eventually sold, on commission, by Mr. 

 Van Voorst, whose name appeared on the titlepage. The 

 volume was expensive to produce, for it contained a large 

 number of coloured plates ; the subject, the marine zoology 

 of an English county, treated in a desultory style, with a 

 mixture of antiquities, gossip, sentiment, and poetry, was 

 one entirely novel, the success of which might well be 

 dubious. My father, however, was willing to try the ex- 

 periment, and he was amply justified. In these days, 

 when the business details of literature attract so much 

 popular curiosity, it may perhaps be of some interest to 

 mention that the net profits of TJie Devonshire Coast ex- 

 ceeded £7^0, no poor sum in those days for one small 

 volume to bring to the pocket of its author. The book 

 was published in May, 1853. 



In February of that year Philip Gosse was asked to 

 lecture. He had never attempted such a thing, but he 

 said he would willingly make a few remarks about sponges, 

 the siliceous skeletons of which he was studying at that 

 moment in correspondence with Bowerbank. He accom- 

 panied the lecture with some large drawings in chalk on 

 the blackboard, and the success of the experiment, which 

 was novel at that time, was such, that he adopted lecturing 

 as a branch of his professional labours, and became a very 

 popular lecturer during the next four or five years. On 

 April 8 the family once more left London, and settled in 

 lodgings at Weym.outh, in Dorsetshire. Here they con- 

 tinued to reside until December of the same year, when, 



