GOSSE'S EXPERIMENTS. 1 5 



after a time, a great many people took to some other 

 new " hobby," and allowed their aquaria to fall into 

 neglect, sufficient enthusiasm was created to keep up 

 the practice to the present time. Some of our public 

 museums, notably that of Liverpool, shortly after- 

 wards exhibited small tanks or glass vessels, con- 

 taining aquatic animals and plants so arranged as to 

 keep up an equilibrium. Mr. Gosse first began with 

 sea anemones, the easiest of all marine objects to 

 obtain and afterwards to keep in healthy order. A 

 collection of these, and of some scarcely less attractive 

 sea worms which he had made at Ilfracombe, were 

 purchased by the Zoological Society of London, and 

 transferred to the new fish-house which had just been 

 built in the Zoological Gardens. In making a further 

 collection for the aquarium which was opened there 

 in 1853, Mr. Gosse gathered most of the material that 

 shortly afterwards appeared in his work on the ' Ma- 

 rine Aquarium ' and ' Rambles of a Naturalist on the 

 Devonshire Coasts.' The small aquarium opened in 

 the Zoological Gardens, London, in 1853, was the first 

 public one started in England, and, although it has 

 long been superseded, it has done good work. In the 

 same year another public aquarium was opened for a 

 short time at the Surrey Zoological Gardens. That at 

 Dublin, which commenced about the same time, was 

 more long-lived, and was remarkable for the ingenious 

 way in which the curator, Dr. Ball, supplied the tanks 

 with fresh air. He so constructed air-bellows that 



