THE ZooLocist—May, 1876. 4915 
Aquarium, with only 20,000 gallons in the show-tanks, and 100,000 
gallons in the reservoir,—total, 120,000 gallons,—the food amounts 
to £120 a-year. In the Manchester Aquarium, with animals of 
precisely the same kind as at the Crystal Palace, and with the 
water always absolutely clear and well oxygenated, the quantity 
of food consumed should be of the value of about £200 a-year, but 
as it comes to only about one-fourth or one-fifth of that sum, proof 
is thereby given that the animal life must be much less than in a 
much larger space, and that, therefore, there must be a waste of 
capital in erecting excessively large, because sparsely occupied, 
water-spaces above ground. I noticed particularly at Manchester 
that the large sea-anemones, as Actinoloba Dianthus, in the greater 
tanks, instead of standing up, like tall columns with overhanging 
tentacles, as at the Crystal Palace, where they are always fed 
individually by hand, one by one, were nearly all flat, contracted 
and closed, because insufficiently fed. Few things seem more 
surprising than that in the sparklingly clear Crystal Palace sea- 
water,—which is not changed or added to further than having two 
per cent. per annum of new sea-water introduced to compensate for 
unfortunate leakages, and one-half per cent. per annum of fresh 
water to supply for evaporation,—we have in five years given our 
animals over £600 worth of animal food (excluding vegetable food), 
and yet we very rarely remove uneaten food, or the excrementitious 
results of food. The cost of such food in Manchester and London 
is the same, and though it may be that Manchester, for unwise 
economy, may purchase very little of the same expensive food, as 
living shrimps and prawns, yet nothing is gained by such an 
omission, as aquarium animals, like human and all other animals, 
thrive best when the food is not only abundant, but varied. 
In all Aquaria, the work to be done is the oxygenation of certain 
organic matters, so that the animals may be healthy and the water 
clear, and if sufficient means be not used to do this work, the water 
must be more or less turbid, or the amount of organic matter must 
be proportionately lessened. Now at Manchester this was the case, 
for the water, when I saw it, was not sparklingly bright, nor was 
_ the amount of organic matter to be oxygenated—7.e., the animals 
and their food—adequately large in comparison to the size of the 
place. Once, I remember, on a very hot day in July, I tele- 
graphed to Manchester that our Crystal Palace temperature was 
as follows :— 
