394 NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



stories which a child could read, one after the other, in the 

 reality of nature itself for the entire eight or nine years of 

 his primary and grammar-school life. 



Aquaria are ordinarily too expensive (or so considered) 

 to be used in the way suggested. The usual directions 

 for making them, with wooden frames, result in aquaria 

 that are always cracking and leaking and hence are unsat- 

 isfactory and generally discouraging. Our first topic is, 

 thus, the best way to make an aquarium. 



Instead of wood for the frame, which will never stop 

 warping, swelling, and shrinking, and is wholly discarded 

 by all makers of aquaria, we will use angle tin, and the 

 only other materials needed are glass, of the desired size, 

 aquarium cement, and solder with soldering fluid or resin. 

 A few tools will be required, most or all of which may be 

 borrowed for the occasion, — a wheel glass cutter, a pair 

 of tinner's snips, a pair of pinchers, a soldering iron, and, 

 last and most important of all, a carpenter's square. A 

 small anvil or block of iron with square corners and a 

 light hammer are convenient to square up the corners 

 nicely, but this may be done with the pinchers. The 

 angle tin, solder, and soldering fluid ^ we will get at the 

 tinner's. For the glass, we will ask the children to bring 

 all the broken window panes and spoiled photographic 

 negatives that they can find. 



The temptation of beginners is to make the aquarium 

 too large. It is then hard to fill, hard to keep clean, hard 

 to move, and is apt to be an elephant in the way. A good 

 size for general purposes is 13 inches deep, 15 inches long, 



^ Soldering fluid is made by dissolving pieces of zinc in hydrochloric 

 acid to saturation. 



