3704 The Zoologist — October, 1873. 



father-lasher {Cottus bnbalis). The Atinelides are represented in several of 

 the tanks by species of Aphrodite and the beautiful Sabellse. Many of the 

 leaf-like and vegetable-looking objects at the bottom of the tanks are 

 popularly called sea-weeds, and demand a microscope to make out clearly 

 their animal nature. Nevertheless a sharp eye will detect a downiness on 

 the surface of their bodies, which is the tentacle of the minute creatures 

 that inhabit every portion of their structure, and are the representatives in 

 our seas of those mighty workers, the coral animals of the southern ocean. 

 The present collection is, we believe, only an earnest of future development. 

 Some marine creatures, such as the jelly fishes, are not at present repre- 

 sented, but before the summer is over a collection of these fragile forms will 

 undoubtedly find a place in the Marine Vivarium of the Society." 



The aquarium iramediately became a fashion, a rage, an in- 

 fatuation, which, now that we are sobered down and are able to 

 regard a stickleback with equanimity and a sea anemone without 

 any sensible increase in the rapidity of pulsation, it seems difficult 

 to realise. The press lent its powerful aid to this result. A 

 judicious publisher is not he who invents, but he who avails him- 

 self of an invention : a man who embarks his capital in a ' Principia' 

 or a 'Paradise Lost' will be esteemed a man of discernment by 

 future generations, but will not be remunerated by the present. 

 The successful journalist follows, while he is supposed to lead, 

 public opinion ; he deludes even himself with this gratifying but 

 shallow fallacy. It was not until the parlour-pond had thoroughly 

 established itself as a fashion that the press detected in it a source 

 of profit. Book-makers and book-publishers then saw their oppor- 

 tunity, and were not slow to embrace it: the press teemed with 

 aquariums. My friend Mr. Van Voorst took the lead in this move- 

 ment, and amid the surging wave of aquarian literature, original 

 and imitative, his volumes are still the best and most likely to 

 endure. I will give the titles and dates of those aquarian volumes 

 which appear to possess inherent excellence, interspersing those of 

 a few tracts which, although of minor importance, assisted greatly 

 in fanning into flame the fire that had already been kindled. 



1850. On the Adjustment of the Relation between the Animal and 

 Vegetable Kingdoms, by which the Vital Functions of both are 

 Permanently Maintained. By Robert Warington. ['Zoologist' 

 for 1850, p. 28G8.) 



1852. Observations on the Natural History of the Water Snail and Fish 

 kept in a confined and limited portion of Water. By Robert 

 Warington. (' Zoologist 'for 1852, p. 3633.) 



