WORK AT THE SEASHORE. 259 



ragged rock-pools that lie in the deep shadow of the 

 precipice on this area " being, as he says in the Devonshire 

 Coast, " tenanted with many fine kinds of algae, zoophytes, 

 Crustacea, and medusae." 



Of the members of the class, one of the most enthusiastic 

 was Sir Charles Lighton, with whom, on frequent occasions, 

 after sending the others home laden to their aquariums, 

 my father would start for a dredging excursion off Lee 

 or Smallmouth. In August the class dispersed, and on 

 September 6 the Gosses returned to town, followed by 

 hampers of living creatures, most of which bore the journey 

 very successfully. Philip Gosse immediately took up the 

 composition of his Handbook to the Marine Aquarium, sl 

 practical supplement to the work which he had lately 

 been engaged upon ; it was soon finished, and he resumed 

 the notes and observations which he had made in 

 Pembrokeshire in 1854, and began actively to rewrite the 

 volume eventually published under the name of Tenby. 

 The Handbook was published early in October, and an 

 edition of no less than two thousand copies speedily 

 exhausted, so great was the interest and curiosity now 

 excited among the educated classes by the invention of 

 the marine aquarium. The year closed uneventfully, except 

 that just before Christmas the pains in the head, which had 

 left him unattacked now for many months, set in again 

 with extreme severity, and threatened to check his work. 



Besides the first volume of the Manual of Marine Zoology 

 and the Handbook to the Marine Aquarium, Philip Gosse 

 composed in 1854 a little guide-book to Kew Gardens, 

 and wrote a number of technically scientific papers for the 

 Royal Society, the Linnaean Society, the Microscopical 

 Society, and the " Annals of Natural History." This may, 

 then, be taken as one of his fullest years, for he was actively 

 lecturing at the same time on popular invertebrate zoology 



