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I 121 J 



exhibition of choice and rare specimens, but they might add 

 considerably to the interest of the Brighton Aquarium by making 

 this a far more important featui-e than it was at present. He could 

 speak feelingly in Brighton, and especially in that Institution, 

 " The Free Library and Museum," under his charge, of the 

 liberality -with which the Directors had contributed duplicates. 

 Upstairs, anyone could see "Presented by the Directors of the 

 Biighton Aquarium," upon many of the specimens in the cases, and 

 he was in possession of the information that the same liberalty had 

 been extended to other museums in the country, which had been 

 eni'iched in their natural history departments by the presentation 

 of duplicate specimens and pi-eparatious. 



Experience had shown that fish caught with a hook were much 

 more likely to live than those captured in a net, the wound caused 

 by the hook in the majority of cases quickly healed, and the animal 

 seemed none the worse ; but the damage inflicted on the scales of 

 those captured in a net generally proved fatal, and taught the veiy 

 important lesson that removing or rubbing the scales of a living 

 fish was about as safe an experiment as scarifying the cuticle of a 

 human being with a currycomb ; in fact, it would be safer to curry- 

 comb a man than to brush and scrape the scales of a fish. In 

 moving, too, some fish, either from the sea or from one tank to 

 another, they must be lifted in water and not in air. 



Few outside the walls of the Brighton Aquarium realised one- 

 tithe part of the difficulties inherent in such a large Institution, 

 especially in the way of regulating the temperature, to say nothing 

 of taming and accustoming wild creatures to captivity and confine- 

 ment. Some would think all that was necessary was to fill a tank 

 with sea water, catch the fish, put them in ic and feed them ; little 

 imagining that each of these processes involved trouble, and, at 

 times, failure after failure before success could be obtained. It was 

 no easy matter to regulate temperature situated as the 

 Aquarium was; then the influx of visitors at times, raised 

 the temperature within the building considerably above that 

 of the water in the tanks, when, as a natural consequence, 

 crack went a pane of glass, the water must be allowed to " run off," 

 and the labour of weeks or months was lost or endangered. Evapora- 

 tion from such large surfaces carried olf no inconsiderable -portion 



