EECEEATIVE SCIENCE. 



73 



MANAGEMENT OF AQUARIA. 



The "aquarium mania" may be considered 

 aa fairly dead : It died out properly and com- 

 pletely 5 but the aquarium remains, and 

 every earnest student of botany and zoology 

 ■will prize it as a irmmph. of art acting as 

 the handmaid of science. We rarely hear of 

 " aquarians in trouble" now-a-days, because 

 the. thousands who set up aquaria, without 

 the least idea that to be successful they must 

 be managed on philosophical principles, have 

 long ago given them up as " troublesome ;" 

 but the scientific observer and the intelligent 

 cultivator of Instructive recreations agree in 

 regarding the aquarium as a valuable means 

 of bringing together many curious objects 

 from various departments of Nature. What 

 a store of valuable Information would it have 

 furnished to Mr. YarreU for the enrichment 

 of his work on fishes? How many of the 

 mistakes of Professor Johnston would have 

 been corrected had he possessed such means 



as we now have for the study of zoophytes P 

 And how much earlier would have been dis- 

 sipated the doubts that long hung like dark 

 clouds over the classification of Infusoria, 

 and the question as to animal or vegetable 

 among various divisions of the Protozoa, had 

 the important balance of forces been earlier 

 arrived at ? How poor the resources of the 

 microscoplst in the absence of a reservoir to 

 guage with the dipping tube ; how unsatis- 

 factory the researches of the marine phytolo- 

 gist without the help of a tank in which to 

 note the effects of light on Algae ; how nar- 

 rowed the field of labour for botanist and 

 zoologist alike without such a means of 

 having always at hand living specimens of 

 the least known but most interesting aquatic 

 plants and animals. 



There is no necessity for me to go over 

 old ground, and tell a thrice-told tale. Most 

 of the readers of this work have aquaria, 



Vol. I.— No. 3. 



