collecting expeditions. His son has described one such party: "At 

 the head of the procession, like Apollo conducting the Muses, my 

 father strides ahead in an immense loose black coat and fisherman's 

 boots, with a collecting basket in one hand, a staff or prod in the 

 other. Then follow gentlemen of every age, all seeming spectacled 

 and old to me, and many ladies in the balloon costume of 1855, 

 with shawls falling to a point from between their shoulders to the 

 edge of their flounced petticoats, each wearing a mushroom hat 

 with streamers." 



Gosse also popularized the keeping of marine aquaria in the 

 home ; he even published instructions on the best ways of obtaining 

 salt water and stocking an aquarium. It was Gosse who encouraged 

 the construction of large pubUc aquaria, including the one at the 

 London Zoo in 1853. His efforts were largely responsible for an 

 almost phenomenal rise of British interest in marine zoology, and 

 the logical outcome of his crusade should have been the founding 

 of a marine biological station. Although he came very near to doing 

 so, the credit must be shared by two other men — an American and 

 a German. 



The first, Louis Agassiz, was born in 1807 in a small Swiss 

 village. After taking a degree in medicine he turned to the study of 

 fishes and in due course was invited to Boston to lecture. He was 

 so successful that he settled in America, accepting the new chair of 

 natural history at Harvard. His enthusiasm for marine biology, 

 stimulated by trips aboard U. S. Coast Survey vessels in 1847, grew 

 to a point where he finally asked the Massachusetts legislature for 

 funds to establish "a seaside marine laboratory." This appeal failed, 

 but news of it reached the ears of a wealthy merchant, John An- 

 derson, who offered Agassiz the island of Penikese in Buzzards 



By the mid-nineteenth century interest in 

 marine biology was attracting week-end 

 enthusiasts to the shores. William Dyce painted 

 his family collecting specimens in Kent. 



"3 



