LITERARY STRUGGLES. 161 



one in which, throughout the world, a fresher air was being 

 blown across the fields of biology and natural history. 

 Captain Fitzroy had just published that account of the 

 cruise of the Beagle in which the greatest of all biologists, 

 Charles Darwin (my father's senior by one year), made 

 his first public appearance ; while in New England one 

 whom, from a purely literary point of view, it is more 

 natural to compare with Philip Gosse, Henry Thoreau, 

 had just made that week's voyage on the Concord and 

 Merrimac rivers which he was to describe some ten years 

 later. The germs of all that made Gosse for a generation 

 one of the most popular and useful writers of his time are 

 to be found in The Canadian Naturalist, — the picturesque 

 enthusiasm, the scrupulous attention to truth in detail, the 

 quick eye and the responsive brain, the happy gift in direct 

 description. The pages devoted to the red squirrel, " that 

 fantastic little gentleman, with as many tricks as a mon- 

 key ; " the disquisition on the hard-woods of Lower 

 Canada ; the episode of the skunk, — these may be taken 

 as typical examples of the felicitous character of the best 

 passages, mingled, it is only fair to say, with much that, 

 from want of literary experience, was put together without 

 skill. One passage may be quoted here — a brief descrip- 

 tion of the phenomena of a Canadian winter tempest : — 

 " Hark to the wind ! how it howls and whistles through 

 " the tops of the trees, like a close-reef gale through 

 " the shrouds and ropes of a ship at sea. Now it sinks 

 " to a hollow moan, then sings again, uttering sounds 

 " which one might fancy those of an ^Eolian harp. The 

 " leaves fly from those few trees which still retain any, 

 " and the long grey moss streams from the tops of the 

 "scathed hemlocks, stretching far out upon the blast, 

 " like signals of distress. Do you hear that crashing 

 " roar ? Some mighty tree has bowed to its destiny. 



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