160 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



the clear note of Gilbert White. Twenty years later, 

 Alexander Wilson had begun to issue the eight volumes of 

 his magnificent American Ornithology. In 1825 Charles 

 Waterton had published his sensational Wanderings. 

 These three works are the only ones which can fairly be 

 said to have preceded The Canadian Naturalist in its own 

 peculiar province, and of these Waterton's, at least, had 

 little but a superficial resemblance to the new departure in 

 natural history. It was from Wilson that Philip Gosse 

 had learned most of the zoological art of his book, but it 

 was his chief advantage to have been held long away from 

 masters and teachers of all kinds, and to have been forced 

 to study nature for himself. In his preface he said, 

 modestly enough, that " the author is fully aware how very 

 limited is his acquaintance with this boundless science [of 

 zoology] ; having lived in the far-off wilds of the West, 

 where systems, books, and museums are almost unknown, 

 he has been compelled to draw water from Nature's own 

 well, and his knowledge of her is almost confined to her 

 appearance in the forest and the field." 



He very soon made himself fully familiar with all that 

 systematic zoologists had arranged and decided. He 

 became a learned as well as a practised naturalist. But 

 the unacademic freshness of his early habit of mind 

 remained, and gave its pleasant tincture to all his subse- 

 quent work. His function continued to be, as it had 

 begun by being, that of one who calls his contemporaries 

 out of their cabinets and their dissecting-rooms into the 

 woods and seashore, and bids them observe the living 

 heart of Nature. Since his time, such appeals have grown 

 more and more frequent, until they have begun to seem 

 commonplace. All can raise this particular flower now, but 

 it was Philip Gosse, in a very marked degree, who first found, 

 or at least first popularized, the seed. The moment was 



