12 THE AQUAVIVARIUM. 



defend the use of inappropriate, absurd, and even 

 wrong names. If you are going to give a thing a 

 new name, then, indeed, it does not much signify 

 what name you give it. A high authority, Sir 

 John Herschell, says, that under these circum- 

 stances, a " nonsense name " is best. Perhaps it 

 is. But it is one of the glories of our English 

 language that we can make use of words from other 

 languages without corrupting our own ; and we 

 have a habit of naming new things significantly 

 let Panopticon, Perambulator, and Polytechnic, 

 stand as examples. 



All parties are agreed that to use old names in a 

 new sense is bad. The collections of water-plants 

 and animals that we have been speaking of have 

 been called a " Vivarium " and an " Aquarium." 

 They are both Latin words, used by Roman folks 

 in times of old. By a " Vivarium " they meant a 

 collection of any living animals : a wild-beast 

 show, a hutch of rabbits, or a pond with fish, was 

 equally a Vivarium. To call our water collections 

 vivaria, then, is correct enough, but not distinctive. 

 We might as well call it a show ; and if we must 

 Saxonize the word we want, it would be a water- 

 beast-plant-show. It is clear, however, that we 

 cannot use so uncouth a word as this, although our 

 German friends might. 



The objections to Vivarium have led to the use 

 of Aquarium ; but here we have another Latin word 

 with already a definite meaning. A Roman Aqua- 

 rium was a reservoir for water, whether used for 

 drinking, bathing, or other purposes. It may be 

 applied to a jug or a pond : it expresses but one- 

 half of our show. We have not only water but 

 living creatures. When it became necessary to 

 write the article Aquarium in the " English Cyclo- 

 paedia," these objections occurred to the word, and 



