840 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



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YOUNG GEOGRAPHIC TURTLES. 



that they may clii 



of proper balance was the special factor which 

 prevented the small aquarium from becoming 

 popular at a much earlier period. 



The facts that animals require oxygen in res- 

 piration and that green plants give off oxygen 

 in excess was discovered and published as early 

 as 1778, but lovers of aquatic life were slow to 

 apply this knowledge. In fact it was not until 

 1850 that the first properly balanced aquarium 

 was described by INIr. Robert Warrington of 

 Manchester, England, in a paper presented be- 

 fore the Chemical Society and entitled, On the 

 Adjustments of the Relations Between the Ani- 

 mal and Vegetable Kingdoms, by which the 

 Vital Functions of botli are Permanently Main- 

 tained. Warrington found that goldfishes could 

 be maintained indefinitely in a glass jar in 

 which was placed some Val- 

 Usneria (tape grass) to sup- 

 plj' the oxygen and with the 

 addition of a few ]iond snails 

 to clean up decayed vegeta- 

 t i o n . Further experiments 

 were then conducted by him 

 along similar lines upon ma- 

 rine animals and plants, and 

 published in the Annals of 

 Natural History for Novem- 

 ber, 1853. 



The work of Mr. Philip 

 Henry Gosse was also of the 

 greatest importance in devel- 

 oping the balanced aquarium, 

 and his book. The Aquarium, 

 an Unveiling of the Wonders 

 of the Deep Sea, published in 

 1854, showed how rapid the 



advancement in the study of 

 the marine aquarium had been. 

 In England and Germany 

 the small balanced aquarium 

 soon became popular in the 

 home. In America little at- 

 tention has been paid to it, al- 

 though a certain few enthus- 

 iastic lovers of aquatic life 

 have maintained aquaria with 

 great success from the time 

 the principle first became 

 known. I\Ir. William Emer- 

 son Damon in his book, Ocean 

 Wonders, gives to Miss Eliza- 

 beth E. Damon of Windsor, 

 Vermont, the credit of being 

 the first person in the United 

 nded with a iioat so gt^tes to keep a properly bal- 

 anced aquarium, the recepta- 

 cle being a two-quart jar supplied with fishes, 

 tadpoles and pondweeds (Potamogeton). 



Tlie idea is prevalent, born of the old days of 

 fish globes and persisting through ignorance like 

 many other exploded notionsf that the aquarium 

 requires a vast amount of time and fussing and 

 especially that the more frequently the water 

 is changed, the better it will be for the animal 

 life. Nothing could be farther from the truth, 

 for when a balance is secured the less changing 

 of anything the better it will be, for fear of dis- 

 turbing the nice adjustment which Nature has 

 set U]) and the xcater should not be chanf!;ed at 

 all. Yet anyone maintaining a balanced aquar- 

 ium will agree that the question first and most 

 frequently asked is "how often do you have to 

 change the water?" The writer has known per- 



YOUNG LONG-EARED SUNFISH IN A BALANCED AQUARIUM, 

 imens of native sunfishes make as attractive aquarium pets as could be 

 and are easily kept. 



