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66 THE MARINE AQUARIUM. 
CHAPTER III. 
COLLECTING SPECIMENS. 
To gather specimens is much more pleasant than to 
purchase them, though an inexperienced person would be 
pretty sure to bring home, from the sea side, many things 
| utterly unfit for the tank. As a rule, green weeds are the 
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best, the red sorts offer some lovely specimens that do 
well in an established tank, though none of them succeed 
in recently prepared artificial water. Brown and olive 
coloured plants are to be wholly avoided, they wither 
soon, and spread pollution around them so as to endanger 
the whole collection. 
Ordinary shore gatherings are quite useless for the pur- 
pose of the aquarium; the drift is composed of torn spe- 
cimens of unsuitable plants, and we must seek for speci- 
mens at the extreme low-water mark, or in the tide-pools 
which remain full during the whole of the ebb. 
During spring tides is the best time for making collec- 
tions, and it behoves excursionists who cannot go to the 
sea side very often, to make their arrangements for such 
trips, in accordance with the state of the moon as indi- 
cated in the almanac. New and full moon are the times 
in which the tide rises highest and sinks lowest, and much 
disappointment will be avoided if such proper times are 
chosen. 
Any one who may wish to gather a few specimens for a 
tank, should be provided with a jar or two, and a basket. 
A geologist’s hammer and a chisel are also necessary. By — 
