The Zoologist — November, 1873. 3741 



Official Handbook to the Marine Aquarium of the Crystal 

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

 Supeiinteudent of the Aquarium. Fiflh Edition, revised and 

 enlarged. 1873. 



(Continued from S. S. 3711.) 



Era III. — Commercial and Ambitious. 

 From the preceding pages it must, I think, be evident that nearly 

 all the conclusions at which we arrived during the First and Second 

 Eras require careful reconsideration. 1 cannot say that what has 

 been termed the balance of nature — so much water, so much air, 

 so many animals, so many plants — is altogether a mistake; but 

 I do without hesitation say that we made too much a rule-of-three 

 sum of the affair, and that the formula we were in the habit of laying 

 down was framed under the idea that by the aid of experience we 

 could define what laws ought to govern Nature, rather than leave 

 Nature entirely unfettered, and humbly ask her to show us how she 

 governs herself; for, as a sea-cave in full flower vvith anemones is 

 far more beautiful than anything we can achieve by our own 

 management, so are the concomitant conditions which have pro- 

 duced that result infinitely more subtle than any arrangements we 

 have in our power to devise. As for sea-weeds in a state of nature, 

 I deny none of the properties which have been attributed to them, 

 but I maintain that in our clumsy attempts to introduce sea-weeds 

 into our fictitious seas, we frustrate rather than promote the object 

 we have in view ; and it is not a little curious that when Nature 

 was actually sowing broadcast her Algae and Confervas in our 

 aquariums we deliberately laid our unwise heads together for the 

 express purpose of defeating her beneficent intentions. We wrote 

 instructions how to get rid of the green growth that was such a 

 nuisance in our otherwise successful aquariums : it is as though a 

 man writing on breeding poultry were to recommend the destruction 

 of all the chickens. Nature should be her own marine gardener. 

 There should be a bottom and sides to an aquarium — this seems an 

 absolute necessity, whether that aquarium be an ocean or a tank ; 

 and Nature, unassisted and uninvited, will clothe the bottom and 

 sides with a drapery of vegetation wherever the light can penetrate. 



SECOND SERIES — VOL. VIII. 3 F 



