Philip Henry Gosse. 359 



science, and filled with a passionate love of nature, with 

 which she succeeded in so imbuing her nephew that scien- 

 tific research remained for him the one unfailing charm of 

 his existence. 



Mrs. Gosse, though herself uneducated, appreciated the 

 talents early displayed by her son, and made strenuous 

 efforts to advance his education, sending him for a short 

 time to the Blandford School, where he received the only 

 classical training he ever enjoyed. 



The extreme poverty of his parents forced them, in 1814, 

 to place him in a large mercantile house in the Newfound- 

 land trade. His duties were not heavy and he found much 

 time for miscellaneous reading. The magic of romantic 

 poetry took him captive. His chief amusement, however, 

 was zoology, and from every source he added to his infor- 

 mation in this department, searching for specimens, copying 

 plates, reading descriptions. When he was sixteen, a tra- 

 velling menagerie aroused in him one of the strongest pas- 

 sions of his life, a love of tropical lepidoptera. The collec- 

 tion contained one of the grand silver-blue butterflies of 

 South America, and " this created an extraordinary longing 

 in the boy's heart to go out and capture such imperial 

 creatures for himself." The gratification of this desire was 

 long delayed but in 1827, an appointment in a countiag- 

 house in Carbonear, Newfoundland, enabled him to begin his 

 studies of the insect-life of the New World. 



The next five years were spent in work uncongenial but 

 not arduous. A visit of six weeks to his old home was his 

 only holiday, but his opportunities for pursuing his studies 

 were many. The period is very important, marking as it 

 does, his transition from boyhood to manhood, and the 

 development not only of his scientific tastes but of that 

 peculiar religious fervor which characterized him through- 

 out his life. 



His studies were made without the aid of books or proper 

 apparatus, so that he was largely thrown upon his own 

 resources. Turning to nature, the great fountainhead, he so 

 assimilated her teachings, that he was afterwards the better 



