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'^(LIBRARY) ai| 
MY AQUARIUM. 
BY H. B. SMALL. 
(Read March 2nd, 1893.) 
In a work that I published on " The Fresh Water Fish of Canada," 
I quoted on the title page, the following passage from W. Scrope, a 
writer in the early part of the century, where he says : " I like the 
society of fish, and as they cannot with any convenience to themselves 
visit me on dry land, it becomes me in a point of courtesy to pay my 
respects to them in their native element." Quaintly as he expressed it, 
it forshadowed the study of their habits. Now Nature opposes certain 
obvious obstacles to the pursuit of knowledge in the water, which 
renders it difficult for the ardent naturalist, however much he may be 
so disposed, to carry on his observations with the same facility as in the 
case of birds and mammals. Still, by observation here and experi- 
ment there, watching through a sheet of plate glass, naturalists manage 
to piece together a considerable mass of curious and interesting informa- 
tion of an out of the way sort, about the domestic habits and manners 
of sundry members of the finny tribe. To the eye of the mere casual 
observer, every fish would seem at first sight to be a mere fish, and to 
differ but little from all the rest of his kind. But when one comes to 
look closer into their ways, one finds fish are in reality as various and. 
as variable in their modes of life, as any other great group in the animal 
kingdom. Concealed under stones in babbling brooks, hiding in the 
grassy margin of purling streams, buried in the depths of silent ponds, 
roaming in the submerged forests of aquatic vegetation, is a multiplicity 
of animal life that may profitably be made a study, and to thoroughly 
explain which would require a lifetime. 
In 1850, Mr. Robert Warrington addressed to the Chemical 
Society of London, a series of observations on the fact announced by 
Ingraham in 1778, that plants immersed in water when exposed to the 
action of light, emit oxygen, and the consequent necessity of their 
presence for the preservation of animal life. He reported placing two 
small gold-fish in a glass, having first planted in sand and earth at the 
bottom, a small plant of valisneria. The latter, as the leaves decayed, 
