3664 The Zoologist — September, 1873, 



government than her own : it appears to me a very grave if not a 

 fatal mistake to reject the teachings of Nature and substitute others 

 in their stead. It cannot fail to strike the thoughtful mind that this 

 mixing up of creatures differently constituted, differently organized, 

 is the only method by which each will be constantly provided with 

 the food and conditions adapted for the well-being of itself and the 

 continuance of its kind. If you would confine tenants of the sea, 

 make their cage as like the sea as possible ; if you would keep the 

 tenants of a river, make your prison-house a miniature river. Take a 

 lesson from the gardener: associate phanerogams and cryptogams, 

 the orchid and the passion-flower, with the fern and the Lyco- 

 podium : Nature does this, and the gardener copies her and 

 succeeds to perfection. 



Era I. Utilitarian. 



The birth of the aquarium is of such remote antiquity that we 

 fail to ascertain the date with any certainty. The point at which 

 any vessel containing water and fishes becomes an aquarium is 

 equally open to discussion. There is abundant reason to suppose 

 that the Chinese and the Japanese had their fresh-water aquariums 

 thousands of years before the Christian era; the Romans certainly 

 had theirs; but in neither of these instances is there any evidence 

 of their being considered, as now, a noteworthy institution ; by the 

 Romans they were established for economic purposes and nothing 

 more, I do not know whether such vessels are again mentioned 

 until 1665, when Mr. Pepys in his Diary, under date 28 May, 1665, 

 as cited by Mr. Lloyd, observes, " Thence to see my Lady Pen, 

 where my wife and I were shown a fine rarity ; of fishes kept in a 

 glass of water, that will live for ever — and finely marked they are, 

 being foreign." I consider this brief passage of infinite interest; 

 were I in a severely critical mood I might object to the expression 

 " live for ever," because'I doubt whether any created being enjoys 

 perpetuity of existence; but waiving this objection, I think the 

 passage establishes the fact that fishes were kept in confinement at 

 Lady Pen's in 1665; and that Mr. Pepys was informed that they 

 had this extraordinary vitality. It is rather a notable fact that we 

 know of no instances of fishes dying or being deteriorated by age : 

 we never hear complaints of a sole, or a turbot, or a salmon, being 

 old and hence objectionable : this can scarcely be asserted of our 

 taurine or anserine, or even gallinaceous, food. 



