Philip Henry Gosse. 367 



describer of facts, and for sometime he did not concern him- 

 self with the theories developed from the details he fur- 

 nished. At last, however, his conscience forced him to en- 

 ter a protest against the hypothesis of evolution. " The 

 current interpretation of the Bible lay upon his judgment 

 with a weight he could not throw off. Therefore, leaving 

 his own field of research, he entered the list with scientific 

 philosophers to his own discomfiture and the regret of his 

 friends." 



" Omphalos " was an attempt to reconcile the six-day 

 theory of creation with the facts of geology. His theory 

 was this : " Life is a circle, no one stage of which more than 

 another affords a natural commencing point. Eveiy living 

 object points irresistibly to the existence of a previous living 

 object of the same kind. Creation, therefore, must mean 

 the sudden bursting into the circle, and its phenomena pro- 

 duced full-grown by the arbitrary will of God, would cer- 

 tainly present the stigmata of a pre-existent existence." 

 By many examples he strives to show that this has been the 

 case with living forms and concludes that the various forma- 

 tions of the earth's crust with their fossils, are not records 

 of past ages teeming with strange life, but mere marks 

 upon the surface of a world, full-grown from its birth, 

 representing links in the cycle of its development which 

 had no existence except in the thought of the Creator. 



His argument is ingenious, but the book was an utter 

 failure from the first, not even receiving the approval of 

 the orthodox party. Kingsley's criticism voiced their feel- 

 ings. In a characteristic letter to Gosse, he said : " I do 

 fear your book has given the ' Vestiges of Creation ' theory 

 the best shove forward it has ever had." 



The work, nevertheless, served a good purpose in remov- 

 ing the author's depression. He returned with enthusiasm 

 to his proper sphere of observation and gave to the world 

 in I860, " A History of the British Sea-anemones and 

 Corals-" As if for recreation, he then turned to the poetic 

 side of nature, and his " Komance of Natural History " has, 

 perhaps, more purely literary merit than any of his other 



