254 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



part of our coast which can compare with them in afford- 

 ing a treat to the marine naturalist." In his volume called 

 Tenby he has given an account, as minute as it is graphic, 

 of the experiences of these summer weeks, and of the 

 results to his aquarium collections. His very delightful 

 and almost uniformly brilliant and successful visit to 

 Pembrokeshire came to a close on August 18. These 

 eight weeks were among the most enjoyable of his life. 

 His bodily condition was unusually good, and Mrs. Gosse 

 was in better health than she had been for two years past ; 

 while he was actively and constantly making additions of 

 a more or less important character to the existing know- 

 ledge of seaside zoology. His important discoveries, lead- 

 ing to a redistribution of genera, and the naming of many 

 new species, of British sea-anemones, belong to this summer 

 of 1854, although they were not then published. 



In the course of the summer, as he was exploring the 

 caverns of St. Catherine's Island, he was accosted by a 

 gentleman who introduced himself as the Bishop of Oxford, 

 and who entered with great gusto into the pleasures of the 

 seashore. The acquaintance thus oddly formed ripened 

 into a daily companionship as long as they were both at 

 Tenby, and after they parted, Dr. Wilberforce and my 

 father kept up a desultory correspondence for a while. 

 Another and more permanent friendship formed at Tenby 

 was that with Mr. Frederick Dyster, the zoologist ; from 

 whom he bought, for ^30, the microscope which he con- 

 tinued, regardless of modern improvements, to use until 

 near the end of his life. His acquaintance with Professor 

 Huxley, then a young surgeon whose investigations into 

 the oceanic Hydrozoa, on board H.M.S. Rattlesnake, had 

 recently given him scientific prominence, and whose 

 contributions to his own collection Gosse records in Te?iby, 

 began in this year ; but his principal scientific or literary 



