THE ZooLocistT—JANuARY, 1875. 4301 
Large Sturgeon at Torquay.—I have just seen, in the shop of Stubbing, 
the fishmonger here, the head and shoulders of a fine sturgeon, which was 
captured by a trawler in Torbay on Saturday, November 21st. Strange to 
say, none of the people in the shop could tell me the exact weight of this 
monster, although they roughly guessed it at being between three and four 
hundred weight. Its length was eight feet eight inches, and it contained 
“row” weighing sixty pounds.—Gervase F’. Mathew; Torquay, Nov. 25, 
1874. 
The Royal Aquarium and Winter Garden Society at Westminster.— 
The money for this undertaking has been collected, the ground has been 
secured, and the architect, Mr. A. Bedborough, with Messrs. Leete, 
Edwards and Norman as engineers, and myself as naturalist, are arranging 
the plans. The spot the building will cover comprises two acres or so 
of at present waste ground in Tothill-street, Broadway, on the northern 
side of the eastern end of Victoria-street. The southern frontage of 
the Aquarium faces Tothill-street and the northern side of the Westminster 
Palace Hotel, and the principal or eastern end of the Aquarium will be 
separated by only the width of the road from the western front of Westminster 
Abbey. The general arrangement will be that of a kind of minor Crystal 
Palace without the outside grounds. The principal promenade will be nearly 
five hundred feet long, and one hundred and fifty feet broad. Music will 
form a very conspicuous feature in the place, there being two orchestras, 
one in the centre of the north side, open to the ‘promenade, and one in the 
closed concert-room at the south-west angle of the building, and in one or 
both of these orchestral compositions will be discoursed twice daily by a string 
and wind band of the Beethoven number of sixty performers, and sometimes 
by a much larger number. There will be broad galleries containing dining- 
rooms, and places for light refreshments, with all the usual accompaniments 
of such places, and a reading and chess-room, with dressing-rooms, rooms 
for band, chorus, and solo artists, for secretary, clerks, naturalist, board- 
room, and so forth. The Aquarium portion will be so great that it 
will be the largest aquarium yet made in any inland place. The glass 
frontage of the tanks will measure nearly six hundred feet for public 
inspection, and eighty feet more for private reserve tanks. The lengths 
of separate tanks will vary from sixty to ten feet, and their width 
from back to frout will be from eighteen feet to three feet, their vertical 
height being from six feet to one foot. The number of tanks has 
not been definitely fixed, but they will be from forty to forty-five in public, 
and twelve to fourteen in private. The reservoir of water below the base- 
ment of the building will contain 600,000 gallons. Two-thirds of the entire 
system of tanks will be sea water, and one-third fresh water, and the whole 
will be maintained unchanged, but circulating through the tanks, day and 
night, at the rate of from eight thousand to twenty thousand or more 
SECOND SERIES—VOL, X. F 
