258 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



Then the prizes were brought home, where each member 

 or group of the class had a little aquarium for the study 

 of their habits ; their beauties investigated by the pocket- 

 lens, and the minuter kinds examined under the microscope. 

 A little also was effected in the way of dredging the sea- 

 bottom and in surface-fishing ; but the chief attention of 

 the class was given to shore-collecting, and very novel 

 and agreeable the amusement was unanimously voted. 



Here for the first time I can trust my own recollection 

 for one or two of those detached impressions which remain 

 imprinted here and there on the smoothed-out wax of a 

 child's memory. I recall a long desultory line of persons 

 on a beach of shells, — doubtless at Barricane. At the head 

 of the procession, like Apollo conducting the Muses, my 

 father strides ahead in an immense wide-awake, loose black 

 coat and trousers, and fisherman's boots, with a collecting- 

 basket in one hand, a staff or prod in the other. Then 

 follow gentlemen of every age, all seeming spectacled and 

 old to me, and many ladies in the balloon costume of 1855, 

 with shawls falling in a point from between their shoulders 

 to the edge of their flounced petticoats, each wearing a 

 mushroom hat with streamers ; I myself am tenderly 

 conducted along the beach by one or more of these 

 enthusiastic nymphs, and "jumped " over the perilous little 

 watercourses that meander to the sea, stooping every 

 moment to collect in the lap of my pink frock the profuse 

 and lovely shells at my feet. This is one memory, and 

 another is of my father standing at the mouth of a sort of 

 funnel in the rocks, through which came at intervals a 

 roaring sound, a copious jet of exploding foam, and a 

 sudden liquid rainbow against the dark wall of rock, 

 surrounding him in its fugitive radiance. Without question, 

 this is a reminiscence of the Capstone Spout-Holes, to 

 which my father would be certain to take the class, " the 



