284 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



own proper work of observation with enthusiasm ; and he 

 started what is admitted to be the most serious and the 

 most durable of his contributions to scientific literature. 

 Since his first visit to Devonshire in 1852 the British 

 sea-anemones and corals had attracted his constantly 

 repeated attention. These curious and beautiful creatures 

 had hitherto been almost entirely neglected. The sea- 

 anemones had possessed but one historian, Dr. George 

 Johnston, who had given them a place in his History of 

 British Zoophytes. Johnston had been a good naturalist 

 in his day, but the number of varieties with which he was 

 acquainted was very small, and he was not by any means 

 careful enough in discriminating species. He lived on the 

 north-eastern coast of England, where these creatures are 

 rare, and the consequence was that for purposes of specific 

 characterization his work was utterly worthless. Johnston, 

 even in his latest edition, had been aware of the existence 

 of only twenty-four British species. Gosse increased this 

 number to between seventy and eighty, and no fewer than 

 thirty-four species were added to the British fauna by his 

 own personal investigation. But even more important, 

 perhaps, than this addition to the record of known forms, 

 was the creation of a complete systematic analysis of the 

 order Actinoidea, a feat which Philip Gosse performed 

 unaided. His system of classification was accepted in all 

 parts of the scientific world, and is still in force, with but 

 very slight modification. 



The great work in which he embodied these investiga- 

 tions was entitled Actinologia Britannica, and professed to 

 be " A History of the British Sea-anemones and Corals." 

 It was begun in the autumn of 1857, and concluded in the 

 spring of i860, having been published in twelve bi-monthly 

 parts, the first of which was issued on March 1, 1858. 

 During these two years, the collection and collation of 



