A CENTURY AT THE SEASHORE

By JOEL W. HEDGPETHTEXAS GAME, FISH AND OYSTER COMMISSION, ROCKPORT

UNTIL a hundred years ago the seashore,with all its myriads of nameless creatures,had been left to itself. It had remained,almost since the beginning of time, as SirEdmund Gosse described it:

The rocks between tide and tide were submarinegardens of a beauty that seemed often to be fabulous,and was positively delusive, since, if we delicatelylifted the weed curtains of a windless pool, thoughwe might for a moment see its sides and floor pavenwith living blossoms, ivory white, rosy-red, orangeand amethyst, yet all that panoply would melt away,fw:led into hollow rock, if we so much as dropped apebble in to disturb the magic dream.

To be sure, naturalists had known of thisvast and lovely province of nature since thedays of Aristotle, that first great seashoreobserver, and there had always been collec­tors of such conspicuous things as sea shellsand starfishes as well as fishers of crabs andcockles for the market place, but in all those4undreds of years between Aristotle and theearly years of Victoria's reign there hadbeen no general pillage of the seashore.

Today, however, there is no longer peaceat the seashore, except, paradoxically, inareas which have been restricted in wartime.The "unravished bride of quietness" hasbeen ravished by those very ones who professto love her most, the nature lovers and thezoology students. Armed with handsomelyillustrated books, buckets, bottles, and ena­mel pans, they descend upon the shore leftundefended by the recessed tide, and scrapeits creatures from their rocky homes and digthem out of their crevice refuges.' Reefswhich have been particularly favored by thecomplicated circumstances of time, tide, andtemperature, have suffered the most, espe­cially if they are near cities, and it is theperennial lament of the teacher who guidesanother ravaging horde to a choice" collect­ing ground" that the beach is no longer asit used to be ten, fifteen, or twenty yearsago. Perhaps there has been, he suggests,a shift in the ocean currents, and the rarercreatures have been obliged to seek somemore favorable spot.

It may be unfair to accuse anyone personof bringing this lamentable state of affairs topass, but if we trace the development of sea­shore study, at least as an amateur pastime,to its beginnings, the most influential namewe find is ;hat of Philip Henry Gosse.There are others, notably Louis Agassiz,who discovered the seashore shortly afterhis arrival in America in 1846, who did theirshare in promoting the study of the sea­shore, but it is Gosse who seems to haveinspired the greater part of the host ofdilettante and amateur collectors who haveinvaded the beaches in the past hundredyears.

As his son Edmund tells us in Father andSon, that inimitable psychological "study oftwo temperaments" :

The fairy paradise has been violated, the exquisiteproduct of centurUjs of natural selection has beencrushed under the rough paw of well-meaning, idle­minded curiosity. That my Father, himself so rever­ent, so conservative, had by the popularity of hisbooks acquired the direct responsibility for a calam­ity that he had never anticipated, became clearenough to him before many years had passed, andcost him great chagrin.

Philip Henry Gosse, the man who, in thewords of the Reverend Charles Kingsley,himself the author of Glaucus, an immenselypopular seashore book, did "more for thestudy of marine zoology than any other . . .man," happened to take up his calling ofpopularizing the seashore by accident. Itwas in 1843, just after Sir James Ross hadreturned from his Antarctic voyage, andwhen the theories of Edward Forbes aboutthe distribution of life in the sea were muchin the minds of profegsional naturalists.Gosse, then 33 years old and author of anot too successful book, The Canadian Natu­ralist, was engaged in writing a generalzoology for the Society for Promoting Chris­tian Knowledge when an illustrator namedWhimper suggested that a book about theocean might find a ready sale. The projectappealed to Gosse, and some time in the fol­lowing year he completed the book, and it

]94

A CENTURY AT THE SEASHORE 195

. appeared in 1845 while he was in Jamaicaon a collecting trip.

This book, The Ocean, is the first of thatlong series of volumes, many of them lav­ishly illustrated, on the wonders and mys­teries of the deep. It is a rare secondhandbookstore that does not have two or threeof these in stock-the recent ones, preparedfor this more sophisticated age, cannot com­pare with those older volumes, crammed withwoodcuts and fascinating stories of every­thing from the unfathomable mysteries ofthe great abysses to the elusive FlyingDutchman. Sea serpents, of course, receivedextensive mention. But it is vain to attemptto describe one of these wonderful books.The eager reader is advised to seek themout in the dustier recesses of a secondhandbookstore.

Gosse not only set a new style in booksbut also changed his own life, for he was thefirst person to be influenc'Pd by his own book.The interest in m.arine zoology he had ac­quired while preparing The Ocean led himto further studies, and in a few years hepublished his Naturalist's Rambles on theDevonshire Coast (1853), which is an ac­count of the manifold attractions of the sea­shore', beautifully illustrated by his owndrawings. Since the appearance of this bookit has become the tradition for writers onseashore life to be their own illustrators, butin precision of detail and brilliance of colorGosse's illustrations for the DevonshireCoast have seldom been equaled in any work,whether it be a scholarly monograph orpopular handbook. The book not only estab­lished Gosse's reputation as an interpreterof the life of the seashore, which was even­tually to earn him an F. R. S. to attach tohis name, but also it almost immediatelystarted a new fad in parlor amusements,the marine aquarium. Perhaps it was thisfad which had as much to do with the ravish­ing of the seashore, which his son was todeplore fifty years later, as the more conven­tional gathering of crabs and sea shells forthe collector's cabinet. In one season aloneGosse himself collected more than 4,000specimens for exhibition in his aquaria atmuseums. Gosse was also the first, at leastin England, to hold natural··history classeson the seashore.

Of course, this interest in seashore lifewas not entirely inspired by Gosse's booksand activities: Edward Forbes, the Manxnaturalist, also was a familiar name to ama­teur naturalists through such works as hischarming History of British Starfishes(1841) and his posthumously publishedNat~tral History of the European Seas(1859). But we remember Forbes primarilybecause of his great mistake, his theory thatanimal life did not exist in the ocean below300 fathoms. This error, together with his

PHILIP H. AND EDMUND GOSSEFROM EDMUND GOSSE'S BOOK Father and Son.

pioneer classification of marine life by zones,stimulated dredging activity by professionaland amateur alike off the shores of Britain,Norway, and the eastern United States.

Although it would be difficult to prove·such a supposition, it seems probable thatForbes and Gosse were more responsible forthat first great oceanographic expedition,the voyage of the Challenger, than posterity­has seen fit to acknowledge. Certainly thesetwo men, as diverse in character and per­sonality as it is possible to imagine, stimu-­lated the large followings of British natural-- .

196 THE seIE TIFIC MONTHLY

EDWARD FORBESFROM WILSON & GEIKIE'S LIFE OF EDWARD FORBES.

ists which were to encourage and support theChallenger Expedition.

Edward Forbes was not so fortunate inhis biographer as was Philip Henry Gosse,and as a result his personality has been lo tin the arid bypaths of the history of cience.1

Of Gosse's almost pathological Calvini m, hisfantastic efforts to reconcile his own literalinterpretation of God's Word with the fos­sil record, as expre sed in that odd bookOmphalos, or The Geological Knot Untied,which so shocked Charles Kingsley that heprotested that if anything could make himdoubt God's wisdom it was that book-ofthese things, and what they meant to a sen­sitive, growing boy, we have a beautifullywritten record. 2

Edward Forbes, on the other hand, was acompletely charming character. Indeed, hewas one of the most delightful personalitiesthat ever graced the solemn halls of science.During those years when Charles Darwinwa patiently studying his barnacles everymorning and Thomas Henry Huxley wascruising off Australia in H.M.S. Rattlesnake,Edward Forbes was the great name on theroster of British naturalists. When any­thing was afoot, it was Forbes who was con­sulted, and his approval was eagerly sought

by the younger naturalists, including Hux­ley. Gosse, on the other hand, was a lonelyand solitary man, especially after the coolreception-or lack of reception altogether­accorded to his Omphalos. Friendship, fora man so beset by his own thorny theology,was difficult at best, and even his intimacywith the genial and easy-going Forbes wasa short-lived affair.

Forbes never forgot that he was born onthe Isle of Man. If he did not believe in theLittle People, he wa at least very consider­ate of their feelings. Gnomes, leprechauns,mermaids, and nymphs frequented the mar­gins of his student notebooks and occupiedconspicuous places in the chapter headingsand tailpieces of his monograph on starfishes.During cientific meetings his long fingerswere always busy drawing caricatures of thespeakers or writing accounts of the meetingin humorous verse--with dubious rhymes­to be read later at his own Red Lions Club.His tall, thin frame was accentuated. by longhair which hung loosely below his ears, andhis deep- et eyes and broad mouth betrayedhis Celtic ancestry. Forbes died in 1854,shortly after he had gained the chair ofnatural history at Edinburgh for which hehad waited so long and impatiently. Thoughhe was busy in his chosen field for most ofhis forty years'l Forbes left no extensivemonument of books and papers behind him.His influence was felt primarily throughpersonal contact and lectures. His oft­expre sed theory that the distribution ofliving animals and plants could best beunderstood by comparison with related fos­sil forms entitles him to an honored but sel­dom ackllowledged place as one of the found­ing fathers of paleontology.

Forbes was less fortunate than Go se inhis family. Gos e, like Henry Moseley, themathematician of sea shells and designer ofbattleships, whose son was H. N. Moseley,naturalist of the Challenger, and whosegrandson was H. G. J. Moseley, the brilliantphysici t who was killed at Gallipoli, andlike Thomas H. Huxley, founded one ofthose three generation dynasties which havecontributed so much to British science andculture. For Gosse's on Edmund, in spiteof his being raised in a home where Shake­speare was frowned upon as frivolous, be-

A CENTURY AT THE SEASHORE 197

came one of "the most understanding andsympathetic interpreters of literature," andhis grandson Philip is a recognized authorityon radium as well as the author of severalbooks about piracy. Forbes had two chil­dren, but neither the Dictiona1'y of NationalBiogmphy nor those concerned with the latermisadventures of Mrs. Forbes-includingthe u ually exhaustive William Roughead­have found them worth mentioning. For in1858, four years after the death of Profe SOl'

Forbes, his widow contracted a marriagewhich, to put it mildly, was unfortunate, andthe subsequent turmoil may have been theprime factor in denying a line of Forbesesto British science. The man Mrs. Forbeshad the misfortune to marry was one Wil­liam Charles Yelverton, who, it seems, hadalready informally married himself to aMiss Longworth under circumstanc~s ofquestionable legality. During the ten yearscontroversy over this marriage, which in­cluded debates in the House of Lords, poorMrs. Forbes and her two children becamethe innocent and forgotten bystanders. 3

CO TRARY to the impression which mightbe gained from a glance at the shelves of awell-stocked library, there have been rela­tively few good books on the seashore andmarine natural history since Gosse's day.There has been no dearth of hack works,many of them charming in an unconsciousway, and of serviceable manuals for ama­teurs, but within the rigid limits of thegenre Gosse has had no successful imitatorsuntil the past twenty years. Two of thebest are The Seas, by F. S. Russell and C.M. Yonge, and D. P. Wilson's Life of theShore and Shallow Sea. Both of these areby members of the staff of the Marine Bio­logical Association Laboratory at Plymouth.These two books satisfy the three essentialsfor a book of this type: that the authorshould be a recognized authority, that heshould illustrate the book-at least in part-­himself, and that it should be written inlanguage accessible to the layman. Afurther desideratum, suggested by the in­fluence these books have had on seashorecollecting, might be that they should inspirerespect for life and discourage idle collectingwhile at the same time arousing interest.

Unfortunately, such sentiments are rarelyexpressed.4

Although the Woods Hole Marine Biologi­cal Laboratory antedates that of Plymouthby several years and has established an hon­orable tradition of marine research in Amer­ica, no member of its staff has preparedanything comparable with the two recent En­glish books. Some explanation for this maylie in the very size of the United States, itsdiverse ocean fronts, and the reluctance ofcommercial publishers to venture on projectswhich have only local interest, but none ofthese possibilities is altogether valid sinceat least two fine books, both of them aboutthe Long Island shore, have been publishedin recent years. These are William Crow­der's A Naturalist at the Seashore (1928)and H. J. Shannon's The Book of the Sea­shore (1933). The authors are both accom­plished illustrators but are essentially ama-teur naturalists. .

Only on the Pacific coast has a book ap­peared which might be considered to standin the high tradition of English populariza­tion. This is Between Pacific Tides, by Ed­ward F. Ricketts and Jack Calvin (1938).Though intended as a handbook for seashoreanimals of the Pacific coast, its readablestyle and approach to the problem by zonesinstead of zoological classification raise itfar above the usual tatus of a handbook.This book has a sort of sequel, Sea of Cortez,by John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts,which is something else again. Many havefound its narrative half too philosophicalfor their tastes or have objected to the phi­losophy on its own merits.

But it is not these books alone which sendstudents and dilettantes to the seashore tocontinue that pillage which Gosse did somuch to inspire less than a hundred yearsago. Indeed, such books are probably notconsulted until interest has already beenaroused in some other manner. This hasbeen more true, perhaps, in America thanin England, where, despite the paucity ofgood seashore books, the coasts of Massa­chusetts and California have been as effec­tively raided as that of Devon, and the prim­eval beauty of the seashore is no more. Itis no less a personage than Louis Agassizwho must be blamed for a large share of

198 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the impetus which sent well-meaning de­spoilers to the shores of the orth AmericanContinent. Like that of Forbes in England,the influence of Agas iz has made it elf feltthrough teaching and the inspiration ofteachers rather than through the writing ofbooks, and the precept "Study nature, notbooks," which he posted on the wall ofAmerica's first ea ide station at Penikesein 1873, i still fresh in the minds of Ameri­can naturalists (now called biologists, orworse still, ecologists), professional and ama­teur alike.

They have indeed studied nature insteadof books, although some of them seem tohave conducted their studies solely for thepurposes of contributing rather dull anddetailed monographs, if not the writing ofbooks. Looking over the first hundred yearsof the books-seaside companion and vademecums, as few as they are, one is temptedto deny that there is any need for newerand better book about the fascinations ofthe seashore and it creatures. 'l'he writer,himself an ardent student of one type of lit­toral creature, who e numbers he has per­si tently reduced on every occasion he hasvisited the beach, and furthermore the authorof some popular articles which may hatvedone their own small part to promote thatsame enthusiasm he now deplores, fully real­izes that he is not without sin. Yet up-to­date manuals of seashore life are badlyneeded, even at the peril of further ransack­ing of the tidepools. Of course, it might beargued that an obsolescent manual 01'

quaintly outdated book-for example, per­haps, one of Gosse's-stimulates more inten­sive collecting, and that a complete manualmight eliminate the necessity of excessivecollecting' in the hope of finding uncata­logued raritie .

There seems to be no way out of thisdileinma; certainly G. K. Chesterton wroteno truer paradox than "The man who ismo t likely to ruin the place he love is ex­actly the man who loves it with a reason.' '5

Such a thought could not have occurred toAristotle on a visit to the shore in thoseremote golden days before Everyman becamehis own biologist, carrying a bucket to thebeach, for Aristotle, while not much of a

poet himself, had a taste for Homer andloved the sea with emotion as well as reason.The unkinde t slur against that great man'sname is the fable that he ended his life bythrowing himself into the sea because hecould not understand the currents in theStrait of Euripus.

,V'e cannot expect a generation of Aris­totIes, but it does not seem too much to hopefor that our biologists, readers and writer ofbooks alike, will go down to the shore, notin the spirit of treasure hunters, but as poetsin pirit and as students of living things in­tead of pecimens in bottles, even if theHomeric phrase doe not ring in their earsas it surely did in those of Aristotle:

7rapa. ffilla 7rOAV</>AO irr/3oLO OaAa.rrrrT/~.

NOTES

1 In addition to Father and Son, Edmund Gosse wrotean earlier. more formal biograpby of his father, TheLife of Philip Henry Gosse (1890). The only biogra­phy of Forbes is Merno;,' of Eldw(lI'd Forbes, F.R.S., byGeorge Wilson and Archibald Geikie (1861). It suffersfrom bein~ the work of two hands, neither of themskilled in biography.

2 It is not without its note of irony that Gosse, theauthor of Orn7Jhalos, n book which argued, among otherthings, that the fossils were created in sitl'. was alsothe originator-or most ardent proponent-of the the­ory that the sea serpent is a livin~ Plesiosal'rus.

3 Cf. William Roughead, The Elvil That Men Do. vol.2. "The Law and Mrs. Yelverton," pp. 469-505 (CrimeCluh, 1929). Perhaps it should be mentioned that H.o. Forbes (1851-1932), author of 11 atl'ralist's Wan­derings in the Eastern ArcllilJelago, was the son of theReverend Alexander Forhes. and presumably no rela­tion to Edward Forbes. Forbes's son was born in 1850,but we do not even liave his name.

• The works of Will1am Beebe, and Rachel L. Carson'sV'lulel' the Sea Wind (19-11), are not. strictly peaking,books about the seashore, nor are they illustrated bytheir authors. Miss Carsou's book is further disquali­fied. b~' my standards, been use it gives names to crea­tures after the manner of Thornton W. Burgess and ismired down in too many purple patches.

• G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy. Ch. V, "The l!'lag ofthe World."

The following vignette is from the title page of Forbes'British Starfi,shes.

In Triton's shell the echoing seat'.s but the mirrored st~rge of SOt~nd

within the distant hallways of the eat',and time the shadow of a thing unfound.

JOEL W. HEDGPETH