The Balanced Aquarium and the Snailery 



6. A siphon, or merely a piece of soft rubber tubing, to draw 

 off the water in emptying tank. 



Much elaborate and unnecessary equipment is offered by 

 dealers in aquarium supplies. The essentials are named above. 

 Most of these articles can be made at home; the others may often 

 be bought at a drug store. 



Wholesale houses carrying druggist's supplies usually can 

 furnish such jars as are required. There are several firms in 

 New York City. 



THE SNAILERY 



Intimate acquaintance with air-breathing mollusks can be 

 cultivated only by bringing specimens from their native haunts 

 into our own homes. Here they will be perfectly comfortable 

 if their surroundings are made homelike. A snailery may well 

 be a glass jar like the aquarium in size and shape. Put in a layer 

 of woods earth three or four inches deep. Plant a few ferns or 

 Other woodsy things, and a clump of damp moss; sink a small 

 dish of water in a corner, and screen the top to keep the snails 

 from escaping. Stock this little molluscan terrarium with the 

 snails common to your nearest woods. Feed them bits of tender 

 lettuce, which out of season you can grow in a flower-pot. In the 

 autumn the snailery may be set on a veranda where the feeling 

 of approaching winter will cause the snails to go into hibernation, 

 secreting a parchment doorway after burying themselves just 

 under the leaf mould. 



In June the eggs may be found in masses or ribbons in both 

 aquarium and snailery. The development of the young snails 

 is one of the most interesting things to watch. The modes of 

 travel, eating habits, the use of the tentacles, foot, and other 

 parts are best observed as the snails crawl on the glass sides of 

 the jar. Few phenomena are more interesting than the prompt 

 thrusting out of the jaw and toothed tongue of a hungry white- 

 lipped snail when it is offered a bit of cabbage or lettuce. 



Carnivorous species in a snailery will devour the vegetable 

 feeders. Keep watch for these, and exclude them. We have 

 comparatively few of these, and a sharp lookout will soon discover 

 the cannibals. 



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