Ill 



CHAPTER VI. 



TEE AQUARIUM AND ITS INMATES. 

 PAET I. 



" Pellucid pools, and rocks in miniature, 

 With their small fry of fishes, crusted shells, 

 Rich mosses, tree-like sea weeds, sparkling pebbles 



Enchant the eye 



a fairy paradise." 



THE popularity of the Aquarium has considerably abated of late, 

 but a few years since it was something altogether extraordinary. 

 It may be a harsh way of describing this popularity to speak of 

 it as a " mania," but a passion so prevalent and intense is cer- 

 tainly nothing less. The tendency to these peculiar mental 

 epidemics is one of our national weaknesses, and is sure to 

 exhibit itself again and again at longer or shorter intervals. It 

 is no great while ago that it showed itself in connection with 

 those preposterous bipeds, the Cochin-China fowls ; and before 

 we had well become reconciled to those ornithological oddities, a 

 still more virulent craze broke out, for converting plain glass jars 

 into magnificent specimens of porcelain and pottery ware. It 

 was our fair friends more especially who were affected by this 

 latter mania, and so entirely did it get possession of them, that, 

 for awhile, there was nothing that took so amazingly at fancy 

 faii-s and bazaars, nothing that was in such great request for 

 wedding and birthday presents, as choice samples of this home- 

 made mimicry of the costly wares of Sevres and Dresden. But 

 Potichomania, like other manias that had gone before it, speedily 

 ran its course, and had to give way to the stronger attractions of 

 a rival novelty. The narrow-necked jar gave place to the 

 capacious tank ; the corpulent Chinamen, the landscapes with 

 impossible perspective, and the brilliantly-coloured 1 utterflies, 

 birds and flowers, unknown to science, all disappeared before a 



