22S THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



coloured by the author. In the preface to this work, Philip 

 Gosse took up a position which was new to the world of 

 zoologists. " Natural history," he boldly declared, " is far 

 too much a science of dead things ; a necrology. It is 

 mainly conversant with dry skins, furred or feathered, 

 blackened, shrivelled, and hay-stuffed ; with objects, some 

 admirably beautiful, some hideously ugly, impaled on pins, 

 and arranged in rows in cork drawers ; with uncouth forms, 

 disgusting to sight and smell, bleached and shrunken, 

 suspended by threads and immersed in spirit (in defiance 

 of the aphorism, that \ he who is born to be hanged will 

 never be drowned') in glass bottles. These distorted 

 things are described ; their scales, plates, feathers counted ; 

 their forms copied, all shrivelled and stiffened as they 

 are ; . . . their limbs, members, and organs measured, and 

 the results recorded in thousandths of an inch ; two names 

 are given to every one ; the whole is enveloped in a 

 mystic cloud of Graeco-Latino-English phraseology (often 

 barbaric enough) ; and this is natural history ! " 



The tradition thus scornfully condemned was that which 

 it was the writer's peculiar function to break through. 

 And he v/as not, like so many reformers, ready to tear 

 down without having any fresh materials or the design for 

 a new edifice. This is how, in the elegant preface to the 

 Naturalists Sojourn, he describes the science of zoology as 

 he fain would see it conducted : — 



"That alone is worthy to be called natural history 

 " which investigates and records the condition of living 

 " things, of things in a state of nature ; if animals, of 

 " living animals : — which tells of their ' sayings and 

 "doings,' their varied notes and utterances, songs and 

 " cries ; their actions in ease, and under the pressure of 

 " circumstances ; their affections and passions towards 

 " their young, towards each other, towards other animals, 



