290 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



nologia Britannica formed a large and handsome volume, 

 copiously illustrated with coloured plates of all the known 

 British species and most of the varieties. The text is 

 constructed on the lucid and elaborated system consecrated 

 to exact manuals of this kind by the tradition of Yarrell's 

 British Birds. The figures of the various sea-anemones 

 are extremely accurate in form, size, and colour, and have 

 but one artistic fault, namely, the want of natural grouping 

 in the plate. In order to secure perfect exactitude, my 

 father drew and coloured each specimen separately, and cut 

 out his figure and gummed it on to its place in the com- 

 pound illustration. Some of the individual figures suffer 

 from the hard line which surrounds them, the result of this 

 composite treatment of the full-page plates. The intro- 

 duction, a minute description of the organization of the 

 sea-anemones, and in particular of their unique and extra- 

 ordinary "teliferous" system, has been regarded as the 

 most sustained piece of original writing of a technically 

 scientific character which Philip Gosse has left behind him. 

 His anatomical statements in this preface are exceedingly 

 minute, and are given almost wholly on the authority of 

 his own dissections and observations, but they have never 

 been superseded. 



While this important work was slowly drawn to a 

 conclusion, Philip Gosse occupied his leisure with a volume 

 of a more ephemeral nature, Evenings at the Microscope, 

 which appeared in 1859. This was a popular introduction 

 to the study of microscopy. The text of the Actinologia 

 was finished in June, 1859, although it did not appear 

 in final book form until January of the next year. But 

 almost as soon as the letterpress was off his hands, my 

 father turned to the composition of a book which had long 

 occupied his thoughts, a volume dealing exclusively 

 with the aesthetic aspects of zoology. " In my many 



