RIVER GARDENS ; 



tion, in which plants and snails, the air-givers and 

 scavengers, established themselves unsought, and 

 the Hampton Court Vivarium assumed, therefore, 

 similar conditions to those of a natural pond, and 

 cannot, therefore, enter into the category of glass 

 Aquaria, such as can he placed upon a drawing-room 

 table; nor can its establishment be considered to 

 interfere with the credit of the inventors of Aquaria, 

 as its success was not the result of the premeditated 

 application of a new discovery. 



The successful illustration of the principles ne- 

 cessary for the artificial cultivation of aquatic plants 

 and animals in small vessels, has been so splendidly 

 exhibited at the Zoological Gardens of London and 

 Dublin, that the taste for imitations upon a smaller 

 scale 'has become quite a mania. A distinguished 

 writer on the subject has, in fact, happily quoted a 

 passage from Juvenal in illustration of the reigning 

 fashion for Vivaria of this kind, which is exceed- 

 ingly apt, though the Roman satirist referred not 

 to little glass tanks, but to the collections of wild 

 beasts which were so much sought after when he 

 penned the passage 



" Omnes tanquam ad vivaria currant." 



It only remains, in this portion of my little 

 work, to say something practical of the manner of 



