318 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



that forbid all contentious matter on the subject of 

 religion, and which yet the author was prepared to sacrifice 

 the whole volume rather than resign. The knot was 

 cleverly untied by Professor E. Ray Lankester, who sug- 

 gested that it should be represented to Mr. Gosse that if 

 an atheist should wish, in future, to defend his atheism in 

 the Transactions of the society, the council could scarcely 

 forbid him to do so, if it had yielded to a Christian writer 

 the privilege of defending his faith in Christianity. My 

 father saw the force of the argument, and gave way, 

 though with great unwillingness. 



Meanwhile, he had for some years been engaged in a 

 course of studies highly gratifying to his earliest instincts, 

 and absorbing in its demands upon his attention. In an 

 earlier chapter of this biography I have described the 

 manner in which the observation of the Rotifera, or wheel- 

 animalcules, became a passion with my father. On the 

 whole this may, perhaps, be considered as having been the 

 branch of zoological study which had fascinated him longest 

 and absorbed him most. In spite, however, of the import- 

 ance of the discoveries which he had made, in the course of 

 his life, in this neglected province of zoology, he had never 

 found an opportunity of publishing them, except partially 

 and obscurely. He retained, in his portfolios, the buried 

 treasures of half a century in the form of unpublished text 

 and plates. Since Philip Gosse had corresponded with 

 Dr. Arlidge, and had lent his help to the publication of 

 the latest (1861) edition of Pritchard's History of the 

 Infusoria, hardly any use whatever had been made of his 

 vast storehouse of information. 



Since 1867 Dr. C. T. Hudson had been at work on the 

 same subject, independently collecting materials towards a 

 final work on the little known and yet charming Rotifera, 

 In 1879 Dr. Hudson was advised by Professor E. Ray Lan- 



