A Gathering of Birds by Donald Culross Peattie

Author:Donald Culross Peattie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Published: 2013-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

XII

PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

IT IS not easy to charm most of us who have positively patriotic feelings about our familiar birds, with des scriptions of exotic song and plumage. I know that, for myself, I have long reached a stage of contentment with the bird world about which I still know all too little—the avifauna of North America and Europe. Towards the stranger and often more gorgeous creatures of nearly fabulous places, I have reservations. So that it was with some cool skepticism that I first opened Gosse’s Birds of Jamaica. But my languor was short. I was presently delivered over to the writer, and still more to West Indian birds, which he has made me long to see and hear. The spell of island life, the beauty of wild tropical scenery, and the adventure of toiling through mountain jungles to hear the mysterious notes of some unseen singer, he made me feel. And since, except among ornithologists aware of the history of their science, Gosse has been so nearly forgotten, it gives me pleasure to bring him forward, without claiming anything extravagant for him, to the attention of modern readers.

Philip Henry Gosse was born in Worcester, England, in 1810. From his father, a miniature painter, the future naturalist inherited, no doubt, his talent for drawing, that went so far to make him the most popular of popularizers of science in a former generation.

Gosse’s earliest employment was in a whaler’s office in Newfoundland. There he beguiled the tedium of his life by making his first acquaintance with the northern birds of the New World and a little later he tried, unsuccessfully, to farm in Canada and then taught school in Alabama. His Letters from Alabama are marked by much humor and appreciation; we see the man in the full ebullience of youth, his style still unformed and not yet quite satisfactory but already vivid and popular. Many notices of birds occur in these letters, but the debt he owes to Wilson and Audubon, not apparent to English readers, is a little too great.

Before long Gosse had either had enough of Alabama or it of him (he is a critical guest) and he returned to England, writing on the voyage his Canadian Naturalist, soon followed by an Introduction to Zoölogy. But The Ocean (1844) definitely established him as a remarkable writer on natural history, and, receiving a teaching appointment at the British Museum, he was assured, after much penury, of some income.

This was an era when great movements were afoot in English science; the air tingled with a coming battle of titans; the public too was eager for popularizations of natural science, and the collecting mania (which is not really scientific at all) had just discovered in tree and pond, on the shore and in the tidal pools, an untouched field where the objects of collection cost nothing and might, as they became rare, sell dear. Gosse was the cabinet god and encyclopedia of these people. His personal approach, his easy narration

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.