LITERARY WORK IN LONDON. 231 



cules was increased, by his meeting with Dujardin's 

 ingenious work on the Systolides, as the French savant 

 called the rotifers. Gosse studied Dujardin with great 

 care, and was at first inclined to lay much stress on his 

 criticisms of Ehrenberg, but this view ultimately gave way 

 to a confirmation of his faith in the solidity and value of 

 the observations of the Prussian naturalist. In this year, 

 185 1, Philip Gosse published in the "Annals of Natural 

 History " his Catalogue of Rotifer a found hi Britain, a list 

 which extended far beyond any previous catalogue of the 

 kind, but yet looks meagre enough now in comparison with 

 the results of later investigations. By the side of these 

 apparently conflicting labours he was engaged, throughout 

 the year 1851, on another and very distinct work. Since 

 the occasion when he had watched the winged bull of 

 Nineveh being brought into the British Museum, his 

 imagination had constantly been occupied in trying to 

 rebuild that mysterious and sinister Eastern civilization, 

 the character of which it is scarcely too much to say had 

 then recently been discovered by the excavations of Botta 

 and Layard at Nimroud. The splendid folios published, 

 in Paris and London respectively, by these intrepid archae- 

 ologists, had excited, in conjunction with the discoveries of 

 Rawlinson, interest throughout Europe. To allay his own 

 curiosity, and with no idea of competing with these 

 masters of the field, Philip Gosse prepared at odd moments 

 throughout 1851 what proved at last a bulky volume on 

 Assyria ; her Manners and Customs, Arts and Arms, which 

 the S.P.C.K. published early in 1852. 



With the close of i85_ijve reach another critical j>oint in 

 the career of the subject of this memoir, and we may 

 review for a moment the results of these five years of 

 incessant labour. Since Philip Gosse had returned from 

 Jamaica in the autumn of 1846, he had completed thirteen 



