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Book Review

Nature 420, 608 (12 December 2002) | doi:10.1038/420608a

Through the eyes of God's naturalist

Rebecca Stott1

In 1857 Charles Darwin wrote to the distinguished zoologist Philip Henry Gosse to request information about "crustacean battles", asking: "Can you tell me, you who have so watched all sea-nature..." Darwin's address to his fellow naturalist is a testimony to Gosse's standing in the history of natural history. Gosse's eyes, pressed to the lens of a microscope, peering into rock pools or through the glass of his window-sill aquarium, had indeed seen more sea nature than perhaps those of any other man or woman in England by 1857.