Cylchgronau Cymru

bark of some of the trees is in perfect preservation The trees are, I fancy, Beech and Oak. Could you identify slices if I were to send you some?" Hux- ley asks where he can read about submerged forests and postulates "direct sinking of the land" for which he thought he had found other local evidence. It was, of course, rising sea level which submerged the prehistoric oak forests at Amroth, and elsewhere around the Pembrokeshire coast. T. H. Huxley's coast surveys and, later, inspectorship of fisheries, took him to many other British coasts, but he returned to Tenby in subsequent years, keeping in touch with F. D. Dyster throughout their lives. Huxley's last visit to Tenby was in 1892 when he was staying at Saundersfoot with his daughter, Ethel Collier, and her children. Dyster died in Tenby in 1893 and Huxley in 1895, at his home in Eastbourne. On 22 and 29 August, 1856, The Tenby Observer carried the following advertisement: "P. H. Gosse, F.R.S. announces that he will be at Tenby (D.V.) on 1st September to open a class of Ladies and Gentlemen for the out- of-door study of Marine Natural History. Particulars may be learned at R. Mason's Library". The paper's issue of 12 September carried a humorous leader on Gosse in action on the beaches and on the growing popularity of marine studies, commenting that: "It is scarcely a month since Mr. Bower- bank took his leave, having completely wrung dry the sponges of our coast." It was "my esteemed friend Mr. Bowerbank" who recommended Tenby to Philip Gosse "as a prince of places for a naturalist", and it was the God- fearing Gosse rather than the agnostic Huxley who made Tenby popular among amateur biologists and collectors. Gosse had published Tenby: A Seaside Holiday, based on his 1854 visit, in March, 1856, and it was on sale and on loan at Richard Mason's circulating library in High Street. This beautifully illustrated book, which is still pleasurable reading, became the 'bible' of fashionable Tenby visitors. Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall, when staying at Belmont (now the Imperial Hotel) in 1861, could look down on ladies searching for specimens in St. Catherine's caves "which that gentle-hearted and patient naturalist, Mr Gosse, has so faithfully depicted in his beautiful book of 'Tenby' "8. Philip Henry Gosse was born in Worcester in 1810 and inherited, as a book illustrator, the talents of his father, an itinerant miniaturist9. In 1811 the family moved to Poole, a port whose merchants were involved in the New- foundland cod fisheries. The teenage boy followed his elder brother to the counting house of George Garland and Sons in Carbonear, Newfoundland and during his years there (1827-35) made entomological collections. From 1835 to 1838 Gosse tried to farm poor land near Sherbrooke in Canada, close to the Vermont border; in 1838 he taught in Alabama and in 1839 he returned penniless to London with his entomological specimens and a draft of the book which became The Canadian Naturalist. His dentist-naturalist cousin, Thomas Bell, F.R.S., helped him to exist in London and eventually the publisher Van Voorst gave him 100 guineas for The Canadian Naturalist. The freshness and enthusiasm of the book, and the accuracy of its observations, were typical of the many books which Gosse subsequently wrote to support his own small family and his parents. Throughout the mid- dle years of the 19th century he became one of the most popular authors in the natural history field. In 1840 Gosse took a cottage in Hackney and ran a small and not very successful school in it. By 1843 he was writing his two-volume Introduction to Zoology, which earned him £ 170 from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. While preparing this work he frequented the Natural History