The Zoologist — October, 1873. 3707 



Each of these various instructions, insisting on the exclusive use 

 of putty, white lead, red lead, Scott's cement, &c., were severally 

 regarded as embodying the perfection of human wisdom until the 

 next adviser suggested an improvement; but notwithstanding this 

 wide divergence on minor points, it is an important fact that all 

 aquarian authorities seem to have deliberately considered and 

 tested, and then uniformly rejected and condemned, all attempts at 

 aeration or circulation. 



Dr. Lankester avers that circulation is only needed as " precau- 

 tionary" until the vegetation is quite established. Mr. Warington 

 says, " With the sea-water obtained in January, 1852, I have been 

 working without cessation up to the present time, agitating and 

 aerating when it became foul during unsuccessful experiments on 

 the sea-weeds, but since then it has rarely been disturbed," and then 

 he emphatically adds, and I think it desirable to express his decision 

 by italics : — " It must he decidedly tmderstood that no agitation 

 or so-called aeration is required when the balance of animal and 

 vegetable life is properly established.^'' This sentiment, perhaps 

 somewhat less decidedly expressed, runs through all the aquarian 

 books of this era : I wish, indeed, to show beyond the possibility 

 of doubt, that the system of aeration and circulation belong to the 

 third era, but it were of no avail to supplement the fiat of the 

 leader with the milder enunciations of the followers; it is like 

 adding wine and water to wine. 



It must not, however, be supposed for a single instant that the 

 aquarian literature of the era is restricted to dry and useless advices 

 or mistaken prohibitions : such a conclusion would be decidedly 

 erroneous, utterly opposed to fact, and Mr. Gosse's work especially 

 abounds in truthful descriptions of aquatic life which might fairly 

 challenge a comparison with anything that has ever been written 

 on the "manners and customs" of the World of Animals. I will 

 make but one extract in proof of this, a long one indeed, but 

 I cannot divide it without destroying its value, and as for making 

 an abstract or abridgment, it is quite out of the question. The 

 author's ideas might possibly be conveyed in an abstract, but the 

 life, the soul of the passage would be wanting if I robbed it of the 

 author's phraseology. 



" The Sepiola. — My notions of the Cephalopoda, derived from figures of 

 the various species in books, were anything but agreeable. I thought of 

 them as hideous, repulsive, fierce, atrocious creatures, hated and fear-ed 



