The Zoologist — Septembek, 1873. 3661 



'gsim 0f f eto 'gmh. 



Official Handbook to the Marine Aquarium of the Crystal 

 Palace Aquarium Company (Limited). By W. A. Lloyd, 

 Superintendent of the Aquarium. Fifth Edition, revised and 

 enlarged. 1873. 



The Aquarium is an Institution, a great institution, and in its 

 present form a novel institution ; but I venture to believe a lasting 

 institution : it has passed through two eras, and has entered on a 

 third ; the first, which endured for a decade, say from 1830 to 

 1840, was very humble, very instructive — almost wholly utilitarian ; 

 the second, which endured for two decades, say from 1840 to 1860, 

 was literarj', poetic and fashionable ; and the third, upon which we 

 have boldly and vigorously entered, may be styled commercial and 

 ambitious: the first was the humble handmaid of Science; the 

 second the servant of fashion ; and the third the child of specula- 

 tion. I need scarcely say the first decade had ray entire and 

 zealous sympathy ; the second my amused attention ; and the third 

 my boundless admiration of the results obtained, without exciting 

 much interest in its progress as a commercial venture. 



Three pitfalls — shall I call them crotchets ? — have beset the path 

 of the aquarian author : Jirst, the idea of planting the aquarium 

 as a marine lettuce garden ; secondly, the idea of making it the 

 theme of a lecture on taste ; and thirdly, the idea of dictating the 

 mode in which the prisoners shall breathe. Mr. Lloyd has not 

 merely avoided the first of these, but has taught others to avoid it, 

 and to allow Nature to be her own gardener; into the second and 

 third, like Quintius Curtius, he has leaped headlong, generously 

 sacrificing himself for the benefit of Science, or what he con- 

 scientiously believes to be Science, I will bestow a few lines on 

 each of these crotchets, or ideas, or pitfalls, call them which 

 you will. 



i. Tlie Gardening Crotchet. — We all know that botanists divide 

 sea-weeds into three series, the olive, the red, and the green, and 

 our three most esteemed authors on aquariums, Gosse, Rymer 

 Jones, and Warington, have thought it desirable to plant the 

 aquarium with one or other of these series : these eminent natu- 

 ralists seem equally unaware that you cannot transplant a sea-weed 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. VIII. 2 T 



