GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 349 



construction of great public aquaria. These institutions 

 achieved, perhaps, their highest success at Naples, under 

 the admirable superintendence of Dr. Anton Dohrn ; but 

 it is to the initiative step taken by Philip Gosse in 1852 

 that science owes the elaborate marine biological stations 

 now established at various points along the European 

 coast. He would not be equally proud to witness the 

 most modern expression of the aquarium philosophy. 

 When he was eagerly proposing the preservation of marine 

 animals alive in mimic seas, he certainly did not anticipate 

 that within forty years an aquarium would come to mean 

 a place devoted to parachute monkeys, performing bears, 

 and aerial queens of the tight-rope. 



His interest in natural objects was mainly aesthetic and 

 poetical, dependingon the beauty and ingenuity of their forms. 

 He regarded man rather as a blot upon the face of nature, * 

 than as its highest and most dignified development. His 

 attention, indeed, was scarcely directed to humanity, even 

 in those artistic amusements to which he dedicated a large 

 part of his leisure. His second wife's predilection for land- 

 scape painting led him, about 1870, to learn the rudiments 

 of that art, and he amused himself by taking a variety of 

 studies in the open air, on Dartmoor, in the valley of the 

 Teign, and by the shore, always selecting a point of view 

 from which nothing which suggested human life was visible. 

 These landscapes, if they were not very artistic, were often 

 marked by his keenness of observation and originality of 

 aspect. It is curious and highly characteristic that, not- 

 withstanding all his familiarity with animal shapes, and 

 his extraordinary skill in imitating them, he was absolutely 

 unable to copy a human face or figure. When I was a 

 child, I was for ever begging him to draw me " a man," but 

 he could never be tempted to do it. " No ! " he would say, 

 " a humming-bird is much nicer, or a shark, or a zebra. I 



