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THE 



AQUARIUM 



81 



An Outdoor Aquarium 



By CHARLES THOMAS 



W hile spending last summer near Lake 

 Champlain in northern Xew York, it oc- 

 curred to me that an artificial brook 

 stocked with such wild fishes as I could 

 find woukl be well worth the labor of 

 construction, and would afl^ord an op- 

 portunity of observing these fish under 

 very nearly their natural environmeni 

 Accordingly, for my own amusement, I 

 set to work to prepare an interesting 

 variation of the household aquarium. 



About two hundred feet from our 

 house was a small spring which flowed 

 down to a brook, some little distance 

 away, at the foot of a hill. Just below 

 the spring, and a little to one side of 

 the rivulet flowing from it. I dug a 

 trench about forty feet long, varying in 

 width from three to five feet and about 

 twenty inches deep. The ground was 

 hard and clayey. The end of the ditch 

 was finished off square and here a tight 

 dam of boards, with a row of one-inch 

 augur holes a little below the level of 

 the bank, served to keep the water in 

 the artificial brook at a constant level. 

 The holes were covered with wire cloth. 



It was a simple matter to divert the 

 flow from the spring into the new course 

 and the next morning I found the 

 ground had become thoroughly saturated 

 and my brook was filled, the water flow- 

 ing oft' nicely through the holes in the 

 upper part of the dam. I soon found it 

 necessary, however, to reinforce the sides 

 of the dam, where the boards were driven 

 into the bank, with a few bricks and a 

 little cement. The bottom of the 1)rook 

 I covered as much as possible with 

 mossy stones and gravel and trans])lanted 

 such water plants as I could find nearl)y 

 to create the appearance of nature. 



To be absolutely truthful, the actual 

 construction which has just been ex- 

 plained very strongly resembled work, 

 and spelled with a capital W, too, but 

 the pleasurable difticulties I had in stock- 

 ing the brook and the fun I derived from 

 watching its inhabitants afterward more 

 than made up for the labor. Nature does 

 not allow us to study her, as a rule, 

 without a good deal of exertion on our 

 part. 



I soon enlisted the aid and enthusiasm 

 of a friend, and together we explored 

 the brooks and streams for miles around 

 in search for a variety of specimens. 

 We used a small seine that two could 

 handle and during the summer netted a 

 large quantity of fish, though not a very 

 great variety. We even explored the 

 shallow waters on the edge of the lake. 

 All fish except those we wished to put 

 in our brook were promptly liberated. 



The only varieties of small fish we 

 found within a radius of five or six miles 

 of Westport, N. Y., were the Black- 

 nosed, Long-nosed and Horned Dace, the 

 Straw, Spotted-tail and Red-fin minnow 

 and the Tesselated Darter. All of these 

 fish we found to be quite common in 

 the streams we explored except the 

 P)lack-nosed Dace, of which we found 

 but two, and these on our first exploring 

 expedition in the stream near our house. 



All of these fish seemed to live to- 

 gether in peace and good understanding. 

 The pleasure of watching their habits 

 amply repaid us for our eft'orts. 



MojMng that the TTorned-Dace would 

 l)uil(l their gravel nests, we provided 

 them with gravel of various degrees of 

 coarseness at the head of the stream, but 

 much to our disappointment they failed 

 to take the hint. In fact, none of the 



Coiiiuiucd on huge 7" 



