248 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



away without examination, since it might contain star- 

 fishes, urchins, the tubes of serpidce, delicate nudibranchs 

 and ascidians, and many other attractive captives for the 

 aquarium. The univalve shells might be inhabited by 

 soldier-crabs, with their charming guardian, the crimson 

 Adarnsia, or cloak-anemone. Skipping among the stones 

 might be tiny fishes and pretty painted shrimps and 

 prawns of various genera ; the long arms of spider-crabs 

 might wave mysteriously above the mass ; sometimes the 

 most gorgeous of the denizens of the British seas, the 

 sea-mouse, with its refulgent silk, would glimmer, like a 

 fragment of a fallen rainbow, through the mud. The keer- 

 drag on the sand would bring ground-fishes, weavers, soles, 

 and rays, rare sea-anemones, and the hump-backed ^sop 

 prawns, with their lovely clouded tones of green and 

 scarlet. The great advantage of dredging, for Philip 

 Gosse's purpose, was, not merely that it supplied him with 

 forms not attainable along the shore, but that it produced 

 the maximum of results, in the way of number of speci- 

 mens, with the minimum of labour. 



His keen enjoyment of this healthy and invigorating 

 existence was suddenly interfered with in the month of 

 July by a deplorable misunderstanding with the Zoological 

 Society. He had succeeded in obtaining specimens in 

 much greater numbers than were necessary for Regent's 

 Park, and he was now sending them also to the Crystal 

 Palace and to other proprietors of aquaria in the neigh- 

 bourhood of London. In doing this he broke no pledge, 

 written or spoken. On the contrary, he was acting strictly 

 in accordance with the principles which he had always 

 maintained. When, in the Annals of Natural History for 

 October, 1852, he had first mooted the question of marine 

 vivaria, he had suggested that " such collections should be 

 formed in London and other inland cities," and this desire 



