shore hunting was no doubt responsible for encouraging many Victorians to take up natural history. Unfortunately, Gatty may have lived to share Philip Gosse’s distress at the thought that his invitation to other collectors to share the delights of the seashore caused them to kill the thing they loved. Edmund Gosse recorded his father’s dismay at the devastation of the shoreline ecology by overzealous collectors. This was in contrast to earlier years in which the rock pools were pristine, to the extent that ‘Adam and Eve, stepping lightly down to bathe in the rainbow-coloured spray, would have seen the identical sights.’ Writing in 1907, Gosse described his memories of the consummate, prelapsarian rock pools of the 1850s and their subsequent despoliation by collectors. His retrospect forms an early critique of the touristic gaze and a curiosity for natural history that resulted in a destructive ecological impact: An army of ‘collectors’ has passed over them, and ravaged every corner of them. The fairy paradise has been violated, the exquisite product of centuries of natural selection has been crushed under the rough paw of well-meaning, idle-minded curiosity. That my Father, himself so reverent, so conservative, had by the popularity of his books acquired the direct responsibility for a calamity that he had never anticipated, became clear enough to himself before many years had passed, and cost him great chagrin. No one will see again on the shore of England what I saw in my childhood, the submarine vision of
shore hunting was no doubt responsible for encouraging many Victorians to take up natural history. Unfortunately, Gatty may have lived to share Philip Gosse’s distress at the thought that his invitation to other collectors to share the delights of the seashore caused them to kill the thing they loved. Edmund Gosse recorded his father’s dismay at the devastation of the shoreline ecology by overzealous collectors. This was in contrast to earlier years in which the rock pools were pristine, to the extent that ‘Adam and Eve, stepping lightly down to bathe in the rainbow-coloured spray, would have seen the identical sights.’ Writing in 1907, Gosse described his memories of the consummate, prelapsarian rock pools of the 1850s and their subsequent despoliation by collectors. His retrospect forms an early critique of the touristic gaze and a curiosity for natural history that resulted in a destructive ecological impact: An army of ‘collectors’ has passed over them, and ravaged every corner of them. The fairy paradise has been violated, the exquisite product of centuries of natural selection has been crushed under the rough paw of well-meaning, idle-minded curiosity. That my Father, himself so reverent, so conservative, had by the popularity of his books acquired the direct responsibility for a calamity that he had never anticipated, became clear enough to himself before many years had passed, and cost him great chagrin. No one will see again on the shore of England what I saw in my childhood, the submarine vision of
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