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ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



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YOUNG GEOGRAPHIC TURTLES. 



Young turtles are very attractive aquarium pets, but should be provided with 

 that they may climb out of the water. 



of proper balance was the special factor which 

 prevented the small aquarium from becoming 

 popular at a much earlier period. 



The facts that animals require oxygen in res- 

 piration and that green plants give off oxygen 

 in excess was discovered and published as early 

 as 1778, but lovers of aquatic life were slow to 

 apply this knowledge. In fact it was not until 

 1850 that the first properly balanced aquarium 

 was described by Mr. Robert Warrington of 

 Manchester, England, in a paper presented be- 

 fore the Chemical Society and entitled, On the 

 Adjustments of the Relations Between the Ani- 

 mal and Vegetable Kingdoms, by which the 

 Vital Functions of both are Permanently Main- 

 tained. Warrington found that goldfishes could 



be maintained indefinitely in 

 which was placed some J'al- 

 lisneria (tape grass) to sup- 

 ply the oxygen and with the 

 addition of a few pond snails 

 to clean up decayed vegeta- 

 tion . Further experiments 

 were then conducted by him 

 along similar lines upon ma- 

 rine animals and plants, and 

 published in the Annals of 

 Natural History for Novem- 

 ber. 1853. 



The work of Mr. Philip 

 Henry Gosse was also of the 

 greatest importance in devel- 

 oping the balanced aquarium, 

 and his book. The Aquarium, 

 an Unveiling of the Wonders 

 of the Deep Sea, published in 

 1854, showed how rapid the 



a glass jar in 



advancement in the study of 

 the marine aquarium had been. 

 In England and Germany 

 the small balanced aquarium 

 soon became popular in the 

 home. In America little at- 

 tention has been paid to it, al- 

 though a certain few enthus- 

 iastic lovers of aquatic life 

 have maintained aquaria with 

 great success from the time 

 t h e principle first became 

 known. Mr. William Emer- 

 son Damon in his book. Ocean 

 Wonders, gives to Miss Eliza- 

 beth E. Damon of Windsor, 

 Vermont, the credit of being 

 the first person in the United 

 States to keep a properly bal- 

 anced aquarium, the recepta- 

 cle being a two-quart jar supplied with fishes, 

 tadpoles and pondweeds (Potamogeton') . 



The idea is prevalent, born of the old days of 

 fish globes and persisting through ignorance like 

 many other exploded notions, that the aquarium 

 requires a vast amount of time and fussing and 

 especially that the more frequently the water 

 is changed, the better it will be for the animal 

 life. Nothing could be farther from the truth, 

 for when a balance is secured the less changing 

 of anything the better it will be, for fear of dis- 

 turbing the nice adjustment which Nature has 

 set up and the water should not be changed at 

 till. Yet anyone maintaining a balanced aquar- 

 ium will agree that the question first and most 

 frequently asked is "how often do you have to 

 change the water?" The writer has known per- 



YOUNG LONG-EARED SUNF1SH IN A BALANCED AQUARIUM. 

 Smaller specimens of native sunfishes make as attractive aquarium pets as could be desired 



and are easily kept. 



