LITERARY WORK IN DEVONSHIRE. 295 



was, even, a revival of the scientific spirit, a fresh response 

 to the instinct of the observer. His principal literary work 

 was a second series of The Romance of Natural History, 

 carried forth, rather too hastily, in consequence of the extra- 

 ordinary popularity of the first. It was issued in Novem- 

 ber, and sold well, but not nearly so well as its predecessor. 

 The book suffers from the usual fate of continuations. We 

 feel that the first series was produced because the author 

 had something which he must say, the second because he 

 must say something. The most interesting and important 

 chapter was that on " The Extinct," in which the author 

 dwells on the death of species, on the disappearance of the 

 mylodon, the Irish elk, the aepyornis, the dodo, and the 

 great auk. In the section on "Mermaids," he tried to 

 repeat the success of his sensational chapter on the " Sea- 

 Serpent," and suggested the possibility that the northern 

 seas may yet hold some form of mammal, uncatalogued 

 by science, which, if guiltless of green hair and a looking- 

 glass, may yet ultimately prove to be the prototype of the 

 mermaid. He had, however, no such definite hypothesis 

 to produce as the old plesiosaurus one, and the public 

 imagination declined to be greatly stirred about mermaids. 

 In the autumn of 1861 Philip Gosse returned with one 

 of his spasmodic bursts of zeal to the accurate study of the 

 rotifera. His successive monographs on Stephanoceros, 

 on the Floscularidae, and on the Melicertidae appeared in 

 the Popular Science Review in the course of 1862, and 

 supplemented the discoveries he had made and reported 

 twelve years before. In these papers he began a general 

 account of the whole class of the Rotifera, arranged 

 according to a classification of his own ; but the Popular 

 Science Review came to an end, and the work was never 

 completed. This important fragment of a history of the 

 Rotifera is constantly referred to in the great work pub- 



