222 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



not published until 185 1, led to a very important crisis in 

 his intellectual career. He had hitherto taken but a super- 

 ficial interest in the lower forms of life. In order to write 

 the first chapters of his Text-Book, he found himself obliged 

 to study what was known of these forms, and the fascina- 

 tion of invertebrate, and particularly of microscopic natural 

 history, suddenly took hold of him. He determined to 

 study these forms at first hand. Early in June he bought 

 a microscope, and this purchase revolutionized his whole 

 life. He instantly threw himself, with that fiery energy 

 which characterized him, into the literature of the subject, 

 and particularly into Pritchard's still classical History of 

 the Infusoria. 



On June 11, 1849, he made his first independent exami- 

 nation of a rotifer under the microscope, and the date may 

 be worth noting as that of the opening of one of the most 

 important of all the branches of his labours. The extreme 

 ardour with which he took up subjects sometimes wore 

 itself out rather rapidly. He grew tired of birds ; after- 

 wards he grew tired of his once-beloved sea-anemones. 

 But in the rotifers, the exquisite little wheel-animalcules, 

 whose history he did so much to elucidate — in these he 

 never lost his zest, and they danced under his microscope 

 when he put his faded eye to the tube for the last time in 

 1888. A week after June 11, he was already deep in 

 observation of Stephanoceros, that strange and beautiful 

 creature, whose " small pear-shaped body, with rich green 

 and brown hues glowing beneath a glistening surface, is 

 lightly perched on a tapering stalk, and crowned with a 

 diadem of the daintiest plumes ; while the whole is set in 

 a clouded crystal vase of quaint shape and delicate texture." 

 He was seized with a determination to collect on a large 

 scale. From a wholesale glass factory in Shoreditch he 

 bought an army of small clear phials, and rose at three 



