Philip Henry Gosse

Philip Henry Gosse

Gosse was a fundamentalist Christian of his age (1810 - 1888), and also a keen field naturalist. He was a contemporary of Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882), but they saw the natural world through very different eyes. Gosse saw everything in ‘Nature’ as an example of God’s design wisdom, and Darwin ended up seeing it as the end result of a struggle for existence and a consequence of evolution by natural selection. Among Gosse’s many publications there are a few about the aquarium, and several about intertidal animals on the British coast.

Gosse - Inventor of the Aquarium

Two of Gosse’s publications (‘The Aquarium’ – 1854 and ‘A Handbook to the Marine Aquarium:’ - 1855) describe what was basically his invention – the marine aquarium. Naturalists could keep animals alive at home and study their behaviour. This became a craze among Victorian naturalists in Britain and led to a new kind of interest in the animals living on rocky shores.

Gosse - Seashore Studies

With the new interest in seashore animals many Victorian naturalist began writing books about the subject. Gosse’s ‘British Sea-Anemones and Corals' in1860 is one of the best. This highly collectable valuable rare book contains exquisite hand-coloured drawings of most British species, but it is in no sense a field guide. It was a book to be read by the fireside while contemplating the wonders of creation, not one designed to be of use while peering into rock-pools. In addition to that, while the animals of the rocky shore might not have changed very much since Gosse’s time, our knowledge about them has improved immensely.

Modern Books and the Internet

Field Guides - Professional and amateur naturalists still take field guides to the seaside in order to help identify animals and plants, but these books are only of use if they incorporate a modern understanding of taxonomy and up-to-date information about distribution. Their illustrations are intended to show diagnostic features rather than to be beautiful (although many are!).

Reference Books – Libraries are full of much larger books which go into details about life histories, behaviour, possible evolutionary relationships – and much more. While, by the nature of things, these books are often out of date by the time they are published, many retain their value for a long time.

The Internet – All scientists, including marine biologists, use the internet widely, and increasingly their research findings are first (sometimes only) published in electronic form.

This means that there are at least four kinds of publications of interest to amateur marine biologists: rare and collectable antique books – for their beauty; modern field guides – for identification of species outdoors; reference books – for background reading; and the internet for instant access to the latest findings and thinking.

British Sea-Anemone and Corals

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