THE AQUARIUM. 63 



interesting aspects, may be wrought into attractive 

 decorations for our ordinary living-rooms, with, very 

 little trouble or expense. 



" By means of an aquarium, the forms and habits 

 of fish, reptiles, and aquatic insects [also,] may be 

 made to develop themselves under our eyes, undis- 

 turbed by the continual necessity of changing the 

 water; thus affording us the curious spectacle of 

 many phases of animal life that have hitherto been 

 concealed in depths inaccessible to the observation 

 of the most curious." 



A very interesting circumstance which appears to 

 have occurred during some of the early researches 

 of the same author in aquatic animal life, although a 

 digression from our subject, is too curious to be 

 omitted. 



He says, " A strange, scorpion-like creature, after 

 exercising its voracious appetite upon every other 

 living thing in the vessel in which I had placed it, 

 seemed suddenly to lose all taste for the luxuries of 

 the palate, notwithstanding a copious supply of the 

 living delicacies it was most fond of, and with which 

 I had taken care to furnish it at regular intervals. 

 It became restless and apparently diseased, and I 

 concluded that I was about to lose this favorite spe- 

 cimen as I had lost so many others. Its uneasiness, 

 however, took quite a different turn to the one I ex- 

 pected, ending in nothing less than a determination 

 to leave its native element. Had I seen a Carp or a 

 Tench quietly walk out of the fish-pond and climb a 

 tree, I could not have been more astonished than 



