Philip Henry Gosse. 361 



studied not only the insects, but all the natural objects, 

 keeping copious notes which he afterwards embodied in the 

 " Canadian Naturalist," his first published book. " The 

 first encouragement from without which came to him in his 

 career," says his biographer, " the earliest welcome from 

 the academic world, arrived in the spring of 1836, in the 

 modest shape of a corresponding membership of the Lite- 

 rary and Historical Society of Quebec. This was quickly 

 followed by a similar compliment from the Natural History 

 Society of Montreal. Those elections indeed conferred in 

 themselves no great honom', for these institutions in those 

 early colonial days, were then in their boyhood and too 

 inexperienced to be critical in their selection. It was none 

 tho less a great gratification to the young man. He con 

 tributed papers to the Transactions of either societies, send- 

 ing to Montreal a Lepidoptera Comptoniensa, and to Quebec 

 an essay on The Temperature of Newfoundland and Notes 

 on the Comparative Forwardness of Spring in Newfoundland 

 and Canada. He also sent to the new museum at Montreal 

 a collection of the lepidoptera of Compton." But poverty, 

 fatigue, ill-health and a sense of failure at last overwhelmed 

 him. He yielded to his misfortunes and sold his farm, 

 blaming the country for the sad ending of his bright hopes. 

 One turns with relief to the record of his scientific life. 

 The " Canadian Naturalist," was intended by him to be a 

 kind of " Naturalist's Calendar," setting forth the praise of 

 Clod and showing the delights he felt in study. Unfor- 

 tunately, it is presented in the form of a dialogue between 

 a father and a son, which is sometimes tiresome, always 

 rambling, but which notwithstanding its crudity, shows 

 the germs of those qualities which afterwards made Gosse a 

 popular and useful writer : — " picturesque enthusiasm, 

 scrupulous attention to truth in detail, a quick eye and res- 

 ponsive brain, and a happy gift in direct description." It 

 was one of the earliest books to call students from the labo- 

 ratory and museum to the woods and streams and bid them 

 " observe the living heart of nature." Appearing at :i time 

 when little was known of the natural wonders and re- 



