3750 The Zoologist — November, 1873. 



glass erection of not large dimensions, standing on a low wall. The door 

 was fastened, and I could see no one inside, and on my asking of a passing 

 attendant what the place was for, he said it was a ' Fish House,' though 

 some people called it an ' Aquarium,' and that it was destined to contain 

 fish and other such things, even sea-fishes and lobsters, and that it was 

 intended to be opened in the following spring. He added his disbelief in 

 its success and an expression of his sense of the impropriety of its intro- 

 duction into a zoological garden. =:= * ■■'• ■'■ * * =•'• 

 T went back to the ' fish house,' and passed round to its rear, and there to 

 my great astonishment, I saw through the glass side of the tank containing 

 perfectly clear water, and wonder of wonders, a living pike ! I wish I could 

 write what 1 then felt ; I wish I could now feel as T then felt, but such 

 freshness of wonder comes to one not more than half-a-dozen times in a fife. 

 I could not get away from the place — it was at the extreme north-east 

 corner of the building, and the tank has been for years converted into a 

 marine one — but I went to it again, and remained there till it began to 

 grow dusk, and it was time to get home. "^^ * * During the last 

 eighteen years in London and Hamburg I have never been without a pet 

 jack in an aquai'ium." 



This seems to have been Mr. Lloyd's first introduction to fresh- 

 water captives. I will now iutroducc both him and my readers to 

 the denizens of the sea: he says that although now (1873) in the 

 Crystal Palace, with all possible means and appliances at his 

 comraand, he can look back on a time, twenty years ago, when his 

 pence and half-pence had to be laid out with rigid economy, and 

 I am thus introduced to one of the most interesting passages in liis 

 life — the search for sea anemones in the streets of Loudon ! He 

 had already set up small aquariums in wide-mouthed glass bottles 

 filled with artificial sea-water, but these miniature establishments 

 were without living inhabitants: his modus operandi for supplying 

 this want is thus described: — 



"I used to sally forth at dead of night, where heaps of oyster-shells were 

 thrown by day from street oyster-stalls, in Smithfield and St. John's-street, 

 and bring them home. The oysters devoured in such poor neighbourhoods 

 are not the genteel little smooth ' natives' eaten at luncheon-bars, but big, 

 rough commoners with bold foliations on the upper shell, and deeply ribbed 

 on the lower one ; and in and below these hiding-places I could find many 

 litde sea anemones of several species, some hopelessly smashed, but others 

 quite perfect, having been protected by the strong projections of the oyster- 

 shell and unharmed by rain or other fresh water. The species I found 

 thus were Actinoloba Diauthus, Sagartia viduata, S. Troglodytes, S. Bellis, 

 S. elegans, and, but very seldom, Actinia Mesembryanthemum. All these 



