RIVEB GARDENS, ETC. 



hibitions, and art treatises, and art novels, and even 

 art sermons, the laws of taste pure taste can no 

 longer be vitiated with impunity. Even the placing 

 of coral branches or sea shells in fresh water would 

 be sufficient to shock the very fastidiously accurate 

 taste of our art critics, and the affected semblance of 

 birds existing under water would be denounced in 

 some cotemporary journal of "art, science, and lite- 

 rature," in language of " crushing force and biting 

 sarcasm." 



The bad taste, however, was not the only defi- 

 ciency exhibited by a past generation of lovers of 

 domestic pets. The principle by means of which 

 fish could be kept in a healthy state in a confined 

 space, when living plants are cultivated in the same 

 water, was not then understood ; and consequently* 

 notwithstanding the greatest care and the changing 

 of the water very frequently, the fish, in most cases, 

 very soon perished, which was the main cause of 

 their going " out of fashion." 



But now that we have mastered the necessary 

 secret, and can keep aquatic animals in a glass ves- 

 sel, arranged as a true miniature lake, we can re- 

 sume our chamber intercourse with our old friends 

 under more auspicious circumstances. We need no 

 longer see them pursuing their interminable circuit 



