
Oct. 12, 1871] 
NATURE 
473 


‘ 
The food consumed by a very few of the animals now 
present in the aquarium is vegetable, consisting of green 
seaweeds (Ulva, Porphyra, Enteromorpha, &c.), but by far 
the greater number have animal food given them. This 
consists of shrimps (alive or dead), crabs, mussels, oysters, 
and fish, but “ butcher’s meat” they never get. Thelarge 
amount of organic matter thus continually (from 8 A.M, 
till 6 P.M. on six days a week) placed in the water, and the 
correspondingly great quantity of excrementitious matter 
resulting from it, is nearly all rendered harmless by being 
“decomposed chemically by the oxygenation of the streams 
of water, and by the growing vegetation, without the use of 
any filter, and without the water being made turbid. In 
fact, the circulating system of the water in this aquarium 
is similar to, and avowedly made on the general model of, 
the circulating system of the blood of many of the animals 
which the aquarium itself maintains in life and health. 
Thus, the steam engine represents a heart, the coals con- 
sumed by the boilers are the food, the pipes are the veins 
and arteries, and the wide spreading air-charged streams 
of water discharged at the jets are the lungs. 
Very few deaths occur, and the condition of the creatures 
will be further improved when the vegetation will have 
grown more. There are, however,reasons for supposing that 
not in any aquarium yet devised can any pelagic animals 
be permanently kept, and that therefore the bulk of speci- 
mens must be littoral creatures. But there are many 
marine animals and plants, both of the deep sea and the 
shore, which at present cannot be kept in captivity at all. 
The reason of this is in some cases known, but with 
others there is not the smallest clue as to the means to be 
adopted for their successful maintenance. 
In front of tanks 1 to 18 are placed obliquely, and over 
tanks 19 to 38 are suspended vertically, glazed frames to 
contain drawings of the animals. These pictures will be 
numbered to correspond with the numbered descriptive 
paragraphs of a guide-book now being prepared for the 
aquarium, so that any animal can be readily found. Al- 
though tank No. 1 contains exclusively sea-anemones, 
and thus properly commences with the lower animals, 
yet the classification of the creatures throughout the 
building is not made with reference to any acknowledged 
system founded on organisation, but the creatures are, so 
far as the limits of the place permit, arranged with refer- 
ence to Aadzts rather than s¢ructure, and in such manner 
that, as much as possible, one animal shall not interfere 
injuriously with another. 
The building is very cool in summer. Thus, during 
the hottest part of the season just passed through, when 
the true temperature of the general atmosphere in the 
shade was 88° F., that of the air in the aquarium was 
only 68° F., and the sea-water never rose higher than 
63° F. For winter, hot-water pipes are arranged to main- 
tain the temperature of the air from 60° F. to 65° F. 
The ventilation everywhere is remarkably good, and 
there is no tank in any of the entire series of sixty, which 
cannot be brought into free contact, when needed, with 
the open air. 
The amount of daylight can also be very exactly regu- 
lated ; and as, for the exhibition of the aquarium on winter 
evenings, it will be necessary to use powerful artificial 
illumination, some experiments are now being made on 
the best mode of lighting it, but it is not precisely known 
what will be the behaviour, in artificial light, of animals 
a great number of which are more or less nocturnal, 
Indeed, in an aquarium the difficulty ever is to show 
animals which endeavour to avoid being seen. 
The architect, Mr. C. H. Driver, of Victoria Street 
(the builders being Messrs. Jackson and Son),* has 
shown much ingenuity in turning to good account every 
part of the space placed at his disposal, and in his simplicity 
of design he has not disobeyed any law of service in con- 
* “Buildings for scientific purposes should be plain and useful above all 
things, 7 appearance as in fact.” —PROF, RUSKIN, 

struction, in any case. Everything is done with a 
meaning, and with a definiteand obvious purpose. Thus, 
as animals cannot exist with comfort without rock-work in 
the tanks, it has been plentifully introduced ; but whatever 
picturesqueness of form it possesses, is merely a conse- 
quence of its being in the first place useful, and so strictly 
and severely is this principle carried out, that such rock- 
work does not project anywhere even an inch above the 
water’s level, instead of being employed, as in most 
Continental aquaria, that of Berlin in particular, in the 
spectator’s part of the building, where it is not wanted, 
and where, being perfectly useless, it is therefore ugly, and 
is merely an expensive excrescence. Everything in the 
Crystal Palace Aquarium is made to look like what it is, 
and not like something else, and not to pretend to be some 
other and more expensive material. Thus, if deal wood for 
its preservation is necessary to be painted, it is not also 
grained to look like oak or walnut-wood. Nor is cement 
squared withi mitation masonry joints, or otherwise treated 
so as to looklikestone. Noristhereany use of sham marble, 
It was certainly deemed advisable to make the building 
externally to correspond in general appearance with the 
arched and other iron framings which compose the 
Crystal Palace adjoining, and in which the glass of 
that edifice is set, but even then, this framing on the out- 
side of the aquarium walls is employed usefully to 
strengthen those walls, which are purposely made in- 
sufficiently strong if such framing were absent. And 
wherever, either outside or inside the place, a little en- 
richment has been indulged in, it properly consists only 
in the decoration of construction, and not in the construc- 
tion of decoration. Systematiceconomy inthis Aquarium 
is in fact throughout observed in such manner that the 
largest number and variety of animals may be preserved 
in the best condition in the smallest space. 
The two woodcuts on page 470, each ona scale of half 
an inch to one foot, represent the pair of largest tanks, 
Nos. 9 and 10, inhabited by crawfish and other crusta- 
ceans, and by wrasse, grey mullet, and other fishes. The 
front of each tank is composed of three pieces of glass, 
divided and supported at equal distances from either end 
by two large vertical mullions of slate and iron, and sub- 
divided by three other and smaller vertical mullions of iron 
only. These six glasses, each measuring six feet square 
and one inch thick, are among the heaviest polished plates 
made in this country, by Messrs. Goslett and Co., and the 
water pressure on their aggregate surfaces amounts to 
46,656 lbs., or nearly twenty-one tons. 
W. A. LLoyp 

THE BIRDS OF THE LESSER ANTILLES* 
(hee Lesser West Indian Islands, although mostly 
belonging to Great Britain and inhabited by a large 
number of intelligent colonists, and moreover easily 
accessible from our shores by a regular fortnightly line of 
packets, have hitherto been strangely neglected as regards 
their zoology. Of their botany we have an excellent 
account by Dr. Grisebach, published under the energetic 
superintendence of the authorities of the Herbarium at 
Kew. Iam anxious to call the attention of the students 
of NATURE to what an interesting field here lies available 
for investigation,—particularly as regards the ornithology 
of these islands. 
The West Indian Islands seem to me to constitute a 
distinct subdivision of the neo-tropical region, which may 
be called the Swb-regio Antillensis. This sub-region is 
divisible into two portions, which correspond to the two 
usually recognised divisions of the islands into the Greater 
and Lesser Antilles, The former of these is characterised 
by the presence of the remarkable mammal-forms So/e- 
* Principally extracted from a paper read before the Zoological S 
on March 21, 1871, 
