296 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



lished by Hudson and Gosse a quarter of a century later. 

 It only includes the three great families of the Floscularidae, 

 the Melicertidae, and the Notommatina ; but it is almost a 

 classic as regards those sections of the class. 



The next year was the first for twenty years in which 

 Philip Gosse was not actively employed in literary work. 

 It was a season of sudden transition ; his tastes, his intel- 

 lectual habits, underwent a complete change. He ceased, 

 almost entirely, to concentrate his attention on marine 

 forms. He abandoned his long-loved mistress, zoology, 

 and in exchange he began to devote himself to astronomy 

 and to botany. Both of these new interests were awakened 

 in April, 1862 — the former in consequence of the publication 

 in the Times of some observations regarding coloured 

 stars which greatly excited his imagination ; the latter 

 through seeing Lord Sinclair's collection of tropical 

 orchids. He began, with his accustomed energy, to devote 

 himself to these novel interests, and he built an orchid- 

 house, in which he presently collected and arranged a very 

 valuable collection of these singular and fascinating plants. 

 He imported them from the tropics on his own account, 

 and in October, 1862, the first of many consignments 

 arrived, in the shape of a rough assortment of orchids from 

 the forests of Brazil. 



Once more he was persuaded to take up the pen in 

 1863. As a popular illustrated magazine of quite a new 

 class, Good Words was just then at the height of a well- 

 deserved popularity. Dr. Norman Macleod had frequently 

 invited Philip Gosse to contribute, but without avail ; until 

 in the first days of 1863, being in South Devon, he called 

 at Sandhurst, and did not leave until my father had 

 undertaken to write a serial for the magazine, a series of 

 consecutive papers, to cover a whole year, describing 

 month by month, in a sort of sea-shepherd's calendar, 



