12 NEW YORK AQUARIUM NATURE SERIES 



rine animals and plants, and published in the Annals of Natural 

 History for November, 1853. 



The work of .Mr. Philip Henry Gosse was also of the great- 

 est importance in developing the balanced aquarium, and his 

 book. "The Aquarium, an Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep 

 Sea." published in lcS54, showed how rapid had been the ad- 

 vancement in the study of the marine aquarium. 



In England and Germany the small balanced aquarium soon 

 became popular in the home. In America comparatively little 

 attention has been paid to it, although a few enthusiastic lovers 

 of aquatic lile have maintained aquaria with great success from 

 the time the principle first became known. The late Mr. William 

 Emerson Damon in his book, ''Ocean Wonders," credited Miss 

 Elizabeth E. Damon, of Windsor, Vermont, with the honor of 

 boing the first person in the United States to keep a properly 

 balanced aquarium, the receptacle being a two-quart jar sup- 

 plied with fishes, tadpoles and pondweed {Potamogeton) . 



The idea is still prevalent, born of the old days of fish globes 

 and persisting through ignorance, like many other exploded 

 notions, that the aquarium requires a vast amount of time and 

 fussing and especially that the more frequently the water is 

 changed, the better it will be for the animal life. Nothing could 

 be farther from the truth, for when a balance is secured the less 

 changing of anything the better it will be, for fear of disturbing 

 the nice adjustment which Nature has set up and the ivater 

 f^houhl not be changed at all. Yet anyone maintaining a bal- 

 anced a(iuarium will agree that the question first and most fre- 

 quently asked by the interested visitor is, "How often do you 

 have to change the water?" The writer has known persons who 

 for years had kept aquaria equipped with plants and animals for 

 proper balance, who still thought it necessary to change daily all 

 <ir part of the water in order to maintain the animal life. 



The writer well recalls his owm early attempts as a child to 

 keep small native fishes in an aquariumi made of a cast-oflf wash- 

 boiler partially sunk in the ground in the garden, and the inge- 

 nuity with which he rigged a small tube to the pump-spout by 

 the horse trough so that' when anyone pumped water a small 

 portion would escape for the benefit of the fishes. A few water 

 weeds would have done the w^ork of aeration more successfully 

 and with much less trouble ; the knowledge of the proper method 

 was lacking, and after a number of abortive attempts the experi- 

 ment was given up in despair. I have no doubt that thousands 



