Vol. IV. 



OCTOBER, 1895. 



Copyright 1895. All Rights Reserved. 



No. 37. 



MY AQUARIUM. 



BY H. B. SMALL. 



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 them- 

 selves visit me on dry land, it becomes 

 me in a point of courtesy to pay my re- 

 spects to them in their native element." 

 Quaintly as he expressed it, it foreshad- 

 owed the study of their habits. Now 

 Nature opposes certain obvious obsta- 

 cles 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 ob- 

 servations with the same facility as in 

 the case of birds and mammals. Still 

 by observation here, and experiment 

 there, watching through a sheet of 

 plate glass, naturalists manage to piece 

 together a considerable mass of curious 

 and interesting information 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 va- 

 riable in their modes of life, as any 

 other great group in the animal king- 

 dom. Concealed under stones in the 

 babbling brooks, hiding in the grassy 

 margin of purling streams, buried in 

 the depths of silent ponds, roaming in 

 the submerged forests of acjuatic vege- 

 tation, 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 ad- 

 dressed to the Chemical Society of Lon- 

 don 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 pres- 

 ence 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, fouled the water, and to rem- 

 edy this he tried the introduction of a 

 few snails, which, feeding on decaying 



