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CHAPTER XL 



LAST YEARS. 

 (1 864-1 888.) 



THE remainder of Philip Gosse's life, spent in extreme 

 retirement in his house at St. Marychurch, does not 

 present many features which are of striking interest to the 

 general reader. I shall not attempt to follow chrono- 

 logically the events of this calm quarter of a century. To 

 give them a history would be to disturb their peaceful 

 sequence, and to destroy their relation with those more 

 stirring facts which have preceded them. A reflection of 

 the even tenour of my father's existence will be found in 

 the narrative which my step-mother, his sole constant 

 companion, has been so kind as to prepare in the form of 

 an appendix to this volume. After 1866, he came but 

 once to London, in 1873, when he spent a day or two in 

 town on business. On this occasion he visited Lloyd's 

 great aquaria in the Crystal Palace, but they failed to 

 interest him to any great extent. Since 1864 he had 

 strangely ceased to feel any curiosity in invertebrate 

 zoology. The first breath of revival in this direction was 

 awakened by a letter of my own to him, in which I de- 

 scribed to him some rarities which I had observed at the 

 south point of the Lizard. He replied (August 5, 1874) •' — 

 "Years and years have passed since I saw any 

 " actiniae living in profusion ; the ladies and the dealers 



