LITERARY WORK IN LONDON 229 



" towards man ; their various arts and devices to protect 

 "their progeny, to procure food, to escape from their 

 " enemies, to defend themselves from attacks ; their 

 " ingenious resources for concealment ; their stratagems 

 "to overcome their victims; their modes of bringing 

 " forth, of feeding, and of training their offspring ; the 

 " relations of their structure to their wants and habits ; 

 "the countries in which they dwell; their connection 

 "with the inanimate world around them, mountain or 

 " plain, forest or field, barren heath or bushy dell, open 

 " savannah or wild hidden glen, river, lake or sea : — this 

 "would be indeed zoology \ viz. the science of living 

 " creatures." 



At the time when these words were written many of 

 the animals of Europe, and, in the persons of Wilson and 

 Philip Gosse himself, the birds of America, had found 

 biographers, but little indeed was known of the mass of 

 species distributed throughout the rest of the world, and 

 of the lower orders of life, in their living state, practically 

 nothing. It was Gosse's privilege to inaugurate this 

 species of observation, and to live to see the actual study 

 of living forms take its place as one of the most important 

 branches of scientific investigation. The public was 

 instantly attracted by the freshness of this new manner 

 of writing. The books Philip Gosse had been composing 

 for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge had, 

 in accordance with a strange whimsey that long prevailed 

 with the council of that Society, been sent to none of the 

 reviews. Their sale, accordingly, though it had been con- 

 siderable, had not been aided or gauged by the publicity 

 of the journals. A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica, of 

 course, was sent to the newspapers by Messrs. Longmans, 

 and it received a welcome from the press which was some- 

 thing quite new in Philip Gosse's experience. One of the 



