338 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



''that half of the characters would serve as well for half 

 "a dozen other species. I have sought to avoid both 

 "errors : to make the diagnosis as brief as possible, and 

 "yet clear, by seizing on such characters, in each case, as 

 "are truly distinctive and discriminative." 

 As early as 183 1 Philip Gosse began to be a minute and 

 systematic zoologist. I have attempted to describe how, 

 in the remote wilds of Newfoundland, with no help what- 

 ever towards identification, except "the brief, highly con- 

 densed, and technical generic characters of Linnasus's 

 Systerna Nahtrcel' he attacked the vast class of insects, and 

 struck out for himself, specimens in hand, a road through 

 that trackless wilderness. The experience he gained in 

 this early enterprise could not be overestimated. Long 

 afterwards, when complimented on the fullness and pre- 

 cision of his characterization, he wrote of his struggles with 

 the Linnaean Genera Insectoriim.'BSidi added that it was then 

 that he " acquired the habit of comparing structure with 

 structure, of marking minute differences of form, and 

 became in some measure accustomed to that precision of 

 language, without which descriptive natural history could 

 not exist." If I may point to one publication of my 

 father's in particular, the acumen and accuracy of which in 

 technical characterization have been helpful to hundreds 

 of students, I will select the two volumes of the Manual of 

 Marine Zoology, which so many an investigator has paused 

 to take out of his pocket and consult when puzzled by 

 some many-legged or strangely valved object underneath 

 the seaweed curtain of a tidal pool. 



As a zoological artist, Philip Gosse claims high con- 

 sideration. His books were almost always illustrated, and 

 often very copiously and brilliantly illustrated, by his own 

 pencil. It was his custom from his earliest childhood to 

 make drawings and paintings of objects which came under 



