WORK AT THE SEASHORE. 



255 



correspondent continued to be Charles Kinj^sley, who in 

 June had taken a house at Northdown, near l^ideford, and 

 was writing Westward IIo ! On Gosse's return from 

 Tenby he had found ICdward Forbes in London, shrunken 

 to a phantom of his fcjrmer self, but still cheerful and brave. 

 He was to die in November, and thus to terminate prema- 

 turely one of the most brilliant careers of the time. To 

 luJward Forbes my father was strongly attached by 

 friendship as well as admiration, and liis was in later }'ears 

 one of the names which he was wont most affectionately 

 to recall. 



The autumn and winter of 1854 were almost exclusively 

 occupied with the study of the Rotifera under the 

 microscope, culminating in a treatise of great though 

 strictly technical importance, On the Structure, F2inctions, 

 and Homologies of the Matidncatory Organs in tJie Class 

 Rotifera, published eventually in the Philosophical 

 Trajisactions of the Royal Society for 1856. This work 

 is illustrated with a great many drawings of the mastax 

 and trophi of various species, and " discusses the changes 

 that they undergo, in passing from the t)'pical to the most 

 aberrant forms. It is in this treatise that Mr. Gosse 

 contends that the dental organs of the rotifera are true 

 mandibulae and maxillae, and that the mastax is a mouth ; 

 and assigns to the class a position among the Articiilatal' 

 says Dr. Hudson, who gives this work a high rank in the 

 literature' concerning the rotifera. Having sent this 

 monograph in to the council of the Royal Society, Philip 

 Gosse immediately returned to the revision of his old 

 translation of Ehrenberg's Die LifnsionstJiierchcn. The 

 monograph was accepted, and read at the Ro}'al Society on 

 F^ebruary 22, 1855, and on successive evenings. It began 

 to seem as though it were impossible for Philip Gosse, 

 however, to live in London, or bear the least social excite- 



