340 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



tiful and exceedingly accurate coloured plates of marine 

 objects which became so popular a part of his successive 

 works. These were drawn on the stone by himself, and 

 printed in colours by the well-known firm of Hullmandel 

 and Walton with very considerable success. The plates of 

 sea-anemones in this volume, though surpassed several 

 years later by those in the Actinologiay were at that time 

 a revelation. So little did people know of the variety and 

 loveliness of the denizens of the seashore, that, although 

 these plates fell far short of the splendid hues of the 

 originals, and moreover depicted forms that should not 

 have been unfamiliar, several of the reviewers refused 

 altogether to believe in them, classing them with travellers' 

 tales about hills of sugar and rivers of rum. Philip Gosse 

 himself was disgusted with the tameness of the colours, to 

 which the imperfect lithography gave a general dusty 

 grayness, and he determined to try and dazzle the indo- 

 lent reviewers. Consequently, in 1854, in publishing The 

 Aquarium, he gave immense pains to the plates, and suc- 

 ceeded in producing specimens of unprecedented beauty. 

 Certain full-page illustrations in this volume, the scarlet 

 Ancient Wrasse floating in front of his dark seaweed cavern ; 

 the Parasitic Anemone, with the transparent pink curtain of 

 delesseria fronds behind it, the black and orange brittle- 

 star at its base ; and, above all perhaps, the plate of star- 

 fishes, made a positive sensation, and marked an epoch in 

 the annals of English book illustration. In spite of the 

 ingenuity and abundance of the " processes " which have 

 since been invented, the art of printing in colours can 

 scarcely be said to have advanced beyond some of these 

 plates to The Aquarium. Philip Gosse was never again 

 quite so fortunate. Even the much-admired illustrations 

 to the Actinologia/\n i860, though executed with great care 

 and profusion of tints, were not so harmonious, so delicate, 



