{"id":25980,"date":"2023-03-23T16:03:47","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T15:03:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/?p=75692"},"modified":"2023-03-23T16:35:42","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T15:35:42","slug":"philip-henry-gosse-the-man-who-invented-the-fishtank","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/rss_feed\/philip-henry-gosse-the-man-who-invented-the-fishtank\/","title":{"rendered":"Philip Henry Gosse: the man who invented the fishtank"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet Philip Henry Gosse, the man who gave the world its first aquarium <\/p>

By BBC Wildlife Magazine\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Thursday, 23 March 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Ha<\/span>d he been born a century later, Philip Henry Gosse might have ended up on TV. As it was, he found other ways to use his many talents \u2013 as a painter, writer, scientist, entrepreneur and preacher \u2013 to bring natural history to the masses.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a young man who was fascinated by wildlife, Gosse travelled to Canada, where he set about cataloguing the insects of Newfoundland and became known as \u201cthat crazy Englishman who goes about collecting bugs\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following stints as a farmer in America and a bird collector in the West Indies (he is still revered as the father of Jamaican ornithology), Gosse returned to England, where he earned his crust writing and illustrating books.<\/span><\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t entirely successful, though. In Omphalos<\/i> (\u2018navel\u2019 in Greek), he attempted to reconcile the biblical account of creation with the latest geological discoveries, arguing that fossils had been placed in the rocks to mislead us by the same God who had provided Adam, the first human, with a superfluous belly button. It was slated by both Christians and scientists.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, other books on beachcombing<\/a><\/strong> and birds proved more popular, while academic texts \u2013 on the genitalia of butterflies for instance \u2013 gave him scientific authority. Gosse was also known for his theory about sea serpents, reports of which provoked much interest in the 1800s: he believed that they were surviving plesiosaurs.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it was perhaps his building of the world\u2019s first marine aquarium, in London\u2019s Regent\u2019s Park in 1853, that made the greatest impact on the world. This revealed a whole unseen realm to the Victorian public and, together with his book The Aquarium<\/i>, started a trend for domestic fishtanks\nthat persists today.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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More famous scientists<\/h4>\n