Review of Gosse's Jamaica

Gosse's Jamaica 1844-45

By Philip Henry Gosse

Edited by D.B. Stewart

Institute of Jamaica Publications Ltd

1984 [1847-1851]

Gosse's Jamaica is a selection from Philip Henry Gosse's forgotten writings on the natural history of Jamaica, first published between 1847 and 1851. Gosse was a British naturalist and a popular writer on natural history topics (Stephen Jay Gould has described him as the David Attenborough of his day). He was also ardently religious. He is best known through the memoir Father and Son, by his son Edmund, in which he appears as an embittered recluse, and in which, not surprisingly, since the book is about the son rather than the father, little space is given to his scientific achievements.

Gosse fell from favour at the height of his career and his books went out of print. His downfall had to do with his disastrous Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot, published in 1857 as a creationist answer to the theory of evolution. It damaged his reputation as a scientist almost beyond repair. The concept of evolution was already widely accepted by the scientists of the day even though Darwin's Origin of Species had not yet appeared. Gosse later redeemed himself with a classic work on rotifers, but from posterity's viewpoint the damage was done. Omphalos was expertly criticized by Stephen Jay Gould in The Flamingo's Smile.

Can there be anything of value in a writer who so thoroughly discredited himself? The answer lies in separating Gosse's scientific work from his religious beliefs. He was an expert in microscopy and taxonomy over an astonishingly wide range of organisms, far exceeding what a modern biologist could hope to master. He was also an astute and perceptive observer and a tireless worker, and he amassed a collection of first-hand observations of wildlife, and in the case of this book, of bird behaviour, which show a rare ability to understand the fleeting actions of animals. These insights he committed to print in vivid, powerful language. As far as I am aware his empirical work has been confirmed by later workers. It could be, then, that his contribution to the annals of science has been under-rated.

I have chosen a short passage from the present volume to illustrate the Gosse paradox. There are lovelier passages, but, lacking religious overtones, they would not do so well. He had collected a nest containing a fledgling Vervain hummingbird and was carrying it back to his workroom. He commented thus:

It is interesting to observe the cleanliness of animals; the dung of young birds would greatly inconvenience them in the nest, and probably cause disease; it is therefore wisely ordained that there should be some mode of getting rid of it. Swallows carry out the excrement of their young in their beaks; and this they are able to do, as at that early season it is enclosed in a tenacious jelly. I observed with admiration, and with adoration, of the tender mercy of God in directing such minutiae as these, for the comfort of His creatures, that this little Humming-bird, while I was carrying it, elevating its body above the edge of the nest, in the bottom of which it ordinarily lay, ejected the alvine discharge in a forcible jet, to the distance of several feet.

This collection was edited by D.B. Stewart, twice Professor Emeritus (of Obstetrics at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, and of Zoology at Brandon University in his native Canada). The Introduction places Gosse and his Jamaica work in context. It is followed by extracts from A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica, including the full text of the "powerful Preface", then the species accounts from The Birds of Jamaica, occupying more than half of the book and focussing on Gosse's field notes and accounts of bird behaviour. Dr. Stewart added explanatory notes confirming the accuracy of Gosse's work as shown by later investigators; and he translated Gosse's identifications to their modern equivalents. A fine short biography of Gosse completes the book, together with notes on his Jamaican associates. There is a brief bibliography.

Gosse's Jamaica would be useful to those with an interest in the history of science (it's essentially an edited reprint of an original source). A susceptible reader might be charmed by Gosse's view of the world for its own sake.

M.A., 8 March 1997, modified 25 July 1997

Postscript, 25 July 1997: Just when I thought I had gotten Gosse out of my system I was startled by a reference in The Size of Thoughts by Nicholson Baker. He quotes a lovely passage from Edmund Gosse's Father and Son in an essay on the history of punctuation. The passage is about rock pools which had been "desecrated by armies of collectors" passing over them, the blame for which Edmund laid at his father's door for a too-effective job in popularising the creatures within them. Appearing unexpectedly like that, out of its original context, the passage brought into focus how closely Edmund's writing style at times resembles that of his father. Elsewhere in Father and Son Edmund relates how his father would send him out for walks and, when he returned, make him write down what he had seen, an exercise he thoroughly disliked. Later he came to realise it had helped his development as a writer. The resemblance should therefore be no surprise; and yet it is.

Part of Gosse's Preface to the Sojourn