A CENTURY AT THE SEASHORE

By JOEL W. HEDGPETH TEXAS GAME, FISH AND OYSTER COMMISSION, ROCKPORT

UNTIL a hundred years ago the seashore, It may be unfair to accuse anyone person with all its myriads of nameless creatures, of bringing this lamentable state of affairs to had been left to itself. It had remained, pass, but if we trace the development of sea­ almost since the beginning of time, as Sir shore study, at least as an amateur pastime, described it: to its beginnings, the most influential name The rocks between tide and tide were submarine we find is ;hat of Philip Henry Gosse. gardens of a beauty that seemed often to be fabulous, There are others, notably , and was positively delusive, since, if we delicately who discovered the seashore shortly after lifted the weed curtains of a windless pool, though his arrival in America in 1846, who did their we might for a moment see its sides and floor paven with living blossoms, ivory white, rosy-red, orange share in promoting the study of the sea­ and amethyst, yet all that panoply would melt away, shore, but it is Gosse who seems to have fw:led into hollow rock, if we so much as dropped a inspired the greater part of the host of pebble in to disturb the magic dream. dilettante and amateur collectors who have To be sure, naturalists had known of this invaded the beaches in the past hundred vast and lovely province of nature since the years. days of , that first great seashore As his son Edmund tells us in Father and observer, and there had always been collec­ Son, that inimitable psychological "study of tors of such conspicuous things as sea shells two temperaments" : and starfishes as well as fishers of crabs and The fairy paradise has been violated, the exquisite cockles for the market place, but in all those product of centurUjs of natural selection has been 4undreds of years between Aristotle and the crushed under the rough paw of well-meaning, idle­ early years of Victoria's reign there had minded curiosity. That my Father, himself so rever­ ent, so conservative, had by the popularity of his been no general pillage of the seashore. books acquired the direct responsibility for a calam­ Today, however, there is no longer peace ity that he had never anticipated, became clear at the seashore, except, paradoxically, in enough to him before many years had passed, and areas which have been restricted in wartime. cost him great chagrin. The "unravished bride of quietness" has Philip Henry Gosse, the man who, in the been ravished by those very ones who profess words of the Reverend , to love her most, the nature lovers and the himself the author of Glaucus, an immensely zoology students. Armed with handsomely popular seashore book, did "more for the illustrated books, buckets, bottles, and ena­ study of marine zoology than any other ... mel pans, they descend upon the shore left man," happened to take up his calling of undefended by the recessed tide, and scrape popularizing the seashore by accident. It its creatures from their rocky homes and dig was in 1843, just after Sir James Ross had them out of their crevice refuges.' Reefs returned from his Antarctic voyage, and which have been particularly favored by the when the theories of Edward Forbes about complicated circumstances of time, tide, and the distribution of life in the sea were much temperature, have suffered the most, espe­ in the minds of profegsional naturalists. cially if they are near cities, and it is the Gosse, then 33 years old and author of a perennial lament of the teacher who guides not too successful book, The Canadian Natu­ another ravaging horde to a choice" collect­ ralist, was engaged in writing a general ing ground" that the beach is no longer as zoology for the Society for Promoting Chris­ it used to be ten, fifteen, or twenty years tian Knowledge when an illustrator named ago. Perhaps there has been, he suggests, Whimper suggested that a book about the a shift in the ocean currents, and the rarer ocean might find a ready sale. The project creatures have been obliged to seek some appealed to Gosse, and some time in the fol­ more favorable spot. lowing year he completed the book, and it ]94 A CENTURY AT THE SEASHORE 195

. appeared in 1845 while he was in Of course, this interest in seashore life on a collecting trip. was not entirely inspired by Gosse's books This book, The Ocean, is the first of that and activities: Edward Forbes, the Manx long series of volumes, many of them lav­ naturalist, also was a familiar name to ama­ ishly illustrated, on the wonders and mys­ teur naturalists through such works as his teries of the deep. It is a rare secondhand charming History of British Starfishes bookstore that does not have two or three (1841) and his posthumously published of these in stock-the recent ones, prepared Nat~tral History of the European Seas for this more sophisticated age, cannot com­ (1859). But we remember Forbes primarily pare with those older volumes, crammed with because of his great mistake, his theory that woodcuts and fascinating stories of every­ animal life did not exist in the ocean below thing from the unfathomable mysteries of 300 fathoms. This error, together with his the great abysses to the elusive Flying Dutchman. Sea serpents, of course, received extensive mention. But it is vain to attempt to describe one of these wonderful books. The eager reader is advised to seek them out in the dustier recesses of a secondhand bookstore. Gosse not only set a new style in books but also changed his own life, for he was the first person to be influenc'Pd by his own book. The interest in m.arine zoology he had ac­ quired while preparing The Ocean led him to further studies, and in a few years he published his Naturalist's Rambles on the Devonshire Coast (1853), which is an ac­ count of the manifold attractions of the sea­ shore', beautifully illustrated by his own drawings. Since the appearance of this book it has become the tradition for writers on seashore life to be their own illustrators, but in precision of detail and brilliance of color Gosse's illustrations for the Devonshire Coast have seldom been equaled in any work, whether it be a scholarly monograph or popular handbook. The book not only estab­ lished Gosse's reputation as an interpreter PHILIP H. AND EDMUND GOSSE of the life of the seashore, which was even­ FROM EDMUND GOSSE'S BOOK Father and Son. tually to earn him an F. R. S. to attach to his name, but also it almost immediately pioneer classification of marine life by zones, started a new fad in parlor amusements, stimulated dredging activity by professional the marine . Perhaps it was this and amateur alike off the shores of Britain, fad which had as much to do with the ravish­ Norway, and the eastern United States. ing of the seashore, which his son was to Although it would be difficult to prove· deplore fifty years later, as the more conven­ such a supposition, it seems probable that tional gathering of crabs and sea shells for Forbes and Gosse were more responsible for the collector's cabinet. In one season alone that first great oceanographic expedition, Gosse himself collected more than 4,000 the voyage of the Challenger, than posterity­ specimens for exhibition in his aquaria at has seen fit to acknowledge. Certainly these museums. Gosse was also the first, at least two men, as diverse in character and per­ in England, to hold natural··history classes sonality as it is possible to imagine, stimu-­ on the seashore. lated the large followings of British natural-- . 196 THE seIE TIFIC MONTHLY

by the younger naturalists, including Hux­ ley. Gosse, on the other hand, was a lonely and solitary man, especially after the cool reception-or lack of reception altogether­ accorded to his . Friendship, for a man so beset by his own thorny theology, was difficult at best, and even his intimacy with the genial and easy-going Forbes was a short-lived affair. Forbes never forgot that he was born on the Isle of Man. If he did not believe in the Little People, he wa at least very consider­ ate of their feelings. Gnomes, leprechauns, mermaids, and nymphs frequented the mar­ gins of his student notebooks and occupied conspicuous places in the chapter headings and tailpieces of his monograph on starfishes. During cientific meetings his long fingers were always busy drawing caricatures of the speakers or writing accounts of the meeting in humorous verse--with dubious rhymes­ to be read later at his own Red Lions Club. EDWARD FORBES His tall, thin frame was accentuated. by long FROM WILSON & GEIKIE'S LIFE OF EDWARD FORBES. hair which hung loosely below his ears, and ists which were to encourage and support the his deep- et eyes and broad mouth betrayed Challenger Expedition. his Celtic ancestry. Forbes died in 1854, Edward Forbes was not so fortunate in shortly after he had gained the chair of his biographer as was Philip Henry Gosse, at Edinburgh for which he and as a result his personality has been lo t had waited so long and impatiently. Though in the arid bypaths of the history of cience. 1 he was busy in his chosen field for most of Of Gosse's almost pathological Calvini m, his his forty years'l Forbes left no extensive fantastic efforts to reconcile his own literal monument of books and papers behind him. interpretation of God's Word with the fos­ His influence was felt primarily through sil record, as expre sed in that odd book personal contact and lectures. His oft­ Omphalos, or The Geological Knot Untied, expre sed theory that the distribution of which so shocked Charles Kingsley that he living animals and plants could best be protested that if anything could make him understood by comparison with related fos­ doubt God's wisdom it was that book-of sil forms entitles him to an honored but sel­ these things, and what they meant to a sen­ dom ackllowledged place as one of the found­ sitive, growing boy, we have a beautifully ing fathers of paleontology. written record. 2 Forbes was less fortunate than Go se in Edward Forbes, on the other hand, was a his family. Gos e, like Henry Moseley, the completely charming character. Indeed, he mathematician of sea shells and designer of was one of the most delightful personalities battleships, whose son was H. N. Moseley, that ever graced the solemn halls of science. naturalist of the Challenger, and whose During those years when grandson was H. G. J. Moseley, the brilliant wa patiently studying his barnacles every physici t who was killed at Gallipoli, and morning and Thomas Henry Huxley was like Thomas H. Huxley, founded one of cruising off Australia in H.M.S. Rattlesnake, those three generation dynasties which have Edward Forbes was the great name on the contributed so much to British science and roster of British naturalists. When any­ culture. For Gosse's on Edmund, in spite thing was afoot, it was Forbes who was con­ of his being raised in a home where Shake­ sulted, and his approval was eagerly sought speare was frowned upon as frivolous, be- A CENTURY AT THE SEASHORE 197

came one of "the most understanding and Unfortunately, such sentiments are rarely sympathetic interpreters of literature," and expressed.4 his grandson Philip is a recognized authority Although the Woods Hole Marine Biologi­ on radium as well as the author of several cal Laboratory antedates that of Plymouth books about piracy. Forbes had two chil­ by several years and has established an hon­ dren, but neither the Dictiona1'y of National orable tradition of marine research in Amer­ Biogmphy nor those concerned with the later ica, no member of its staff has prepared misadventures of Mrs. Forbes-including anything comparable with the two recent En­ the u ually exhaustive William Roughead­ glish books. Some explanation for this may have found them worth mentioning. For in lie in the very size of the United States, its 1858, four years after the death of Profe SOl' diverse ocean fronts, and the reluctance of Forbes, his widow contracted a marriage commercial publishers to venture on projects which, to put it mildly, was unfortunate, and which have only local interest, but none of the subsequent turmoil may have been the these possibilities is altogether valid since prime factor in denying a line of Forbeses at least two fine books, both of them about to British science. The man Mrs. Forbes the Long Island shore, have been published had the misfortune to marry was one Wil­ in recent years. These are William Crow­ liam Charles Yelverton, who, it seems, had der's A Naturalist at the Seashore (1928) already informally married himself to a and H. J. Shannon's The Book of the Sea­ Miss Longworth under circumstanc~s of shore (1933). The authors are both accom­ questionable legality. During the ten years plished illustrators but are essentially ama- controversy over this marriage, which in­ teur naturalists. . cluded debates in the House of Lords, poor Only on the Pacific coast has a book ap­ Mrs. Forbes and her two children became peared which might be considered to stand the innocent and forgotten bystanders.3 in the high tradition of English populariza­ tion. This is Between Pacific Tides, by Ed­ CO TRARY to the impression which might ward F. Ricketts and Jack Calvin (1938). be gained from a glance at the shelves of a Though intended as a handbook for seashore well-stocked library, there have been rela­ animals of the Pacific coast, its readable tively few good books on the seashore and style and approach to the problem by zones marine natural history since Gosse's day. instead of zoological classification raise it There has been no dearth of hack works, far above the usual tatus of a handbook. many of them charming in an unconscious This book has a sort of sequel, Sea of Cortez, way, and of serviceable manuals for ama­ by John Steinbeck and Edward F. Ricketts, teurs, but within the rigid limits of the which is something else again. Many have genre Gosse has had no successful imitators found its narrative half too philosophical until the past twenty years. Two of the for their tastes or have objected to the phi­ best are The Seas, by F. S. Russell and C. losophy on its own merits. M. Yonge, and D. P. Wilson's Life of the But it is not these books alone which send Shore and Shallow Sea. Both of these are students and dilettantes to the seashore to by members of the staff of the Marine Bio­ continue that pillage which Gosse did so logical Association Laboratory at Plymouth. much to inspire less than a hundred years These two books satisfy the three essentials ago. Indeed, such books are probably not for a book of this type: that the author consulted until interest has already been should be a recognized authority, that he aroused in some other manner. This has should illustrate the book-at least in part-­ been more true, perhaps, in America than himself, and that it should be written in in England, where, despite the paucity of language accessible to the layman. A good seashore books, the coasts of Massa­ further desideratum, suggested by the in­ chusetts and California have been as effec­ fluence these books have had on seashore tively raided as that of , and the prim­ collecting, might be that they should inspire eval beauty of the seashore is no more. It respect for life and discourage idle collecting is no less a personage than Louis Agassiz while at the same time arousing interest. who must be blamed for a large share of 198 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the impetus which sent well-meaning de­ poet himself, had a taste for Homer and spoilers to the shores of the orth American loved the sea with emotion as well as reason. Continent. Like that of Forbes in England, The unkinde t slur against that great man's the influence of Agas iz has made it elf felt name is the fable that he ended his life by through teaching and the inspiration of throwing himself into the sea because he teachers rather than through the writing of could not understand the currents in the books, and the precept "Study nature, not Strait of Euripus. books," which he posted on the wall of ,V'e cannot expect a generation of Aris­ America's first ea ide station at Penikese totIes, but it does not seem too much to hope in 1873, i still fresh in the minds of Ameri­ for that our biologists, readers and writer of can naturalists (now called biologists, or books alike, will go down to the shore, not worse still, ecologists), professional and ama­ in the spirit of treasure hunters, but as poets teur alike. in pirit and as students of living things in­ They have indeed studied nature instead tead of pecimens in bottles, even if the of books, although some of them seem to Homeric phrase doe not ring in their ears have conducted their studies solely for the as it surely did in those of Aristotle: purposes of contributing rather dull and 7rapa. ffilla 7rOAVAO irr/3oLO OaAa.rrrrT/~. detailed monographs, if not the writing of books. Looking over the first hundred years NOTES of the books-seaside companion and vade 1 In addition to Father and Son, Edmund Gosse wrote an earlier. more formal biograpby of his father, The mecums, as few as they are, one is tempted Life of Philip Henry Gosse (1890). The only biogra­ phy of Forbes is Merno;,' of Eldw(lI'd Forbes, F.R.S., by to deny that there is any need for newer George Wilson and Archibald Geikie (1861). It suffers from bein~ the work of two hands, neither of them and better book about the fascinations of skilled in biography. the seashore and it creatures. 'l'he writer, 2 It is not without its note of irony that Gosse, the author of Orn7Jhalos, n book which argued, among other himself an ardent student of one type of lit­ things, that the fossils were created in sitl'. was also the originator-or most ardent proponent-of the the­ toral creature, who e numbers he has per­ ory that the sea serpent is a livin~ Plesiosal'rus. 3 Cf. William Roughead, The Elvil That Men Do. vol. si tently reduced on every occasion he has 2. "The Law and Mrs. Yelverton," pp. 469-505 (Crime Cluh, 1929). Perhaps it should be mentioned that H. visited the beach, and furthermore the author o. Forbes (1851-1932), author of 11 atl'ralist's Wan­ of some popular articles which may hatve derings in the Eastern ArcllilJelago, was the son of the Reverend Alexander Forhes. and presumably no rela­ done their own small part to promote that tion to Edward Forbes. Forbes's son was born in 1850, but we do not even liave his name. same enthusiasm he now deplores, fully real­ • The works of Will1am Beebe, and Rachel L. Carson's V'lulel' the Sea Wind (19-11), are not. strictly peaking, izes that he is not without sin. Yet up-to­ books about the seashore, nor are they illustrated by their authors. Miss Carsou's book is further disquali­ date manuals of seashore life are badly fied. b~' my standards, been use it gives names to crea­ tures after the manner of Thornton W. Burgess and is needed, even at the peril of further ransack­ mired down in too many purple patches. ing of the tidepools. Of course, it might be • G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy. Ch. V, "The l!'lag of the World." argued that an obsolescent manual 01' The following vignette is from the title page of Forbes' quaintly outdated book-for example, per­ British Starfi,shes. haps, one of Gosse's-stimulates more inten­ sive collecting, and that a complete manual might eliminate the necessity of excessive collecting' in the hope of finding uncata­ logued raritie . There seems to be no way out of this dileinma; certainly G. K. Chesterton wrote no truer paradox than "The man who is mo t likely to ruin the place he love is ex­ actly the man who loves it with a reason.' '5 Such a thought could not have occurred to In Triton's shell the echoing sea Aristotle on a visit to the shore in those t'.s but the mirrored st~rge of SOt~nd remote golden days before Everyman became within the distant hallways of the eat', his own biologist, carrying a bucket to the and time the shadow of a thing unfound. beach, for Aristotle, while not much of a JOEL W. HEDGPETH