56 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



ONE OF Tll£ EXHIBITION CORRIDORS: MIAMI AQUARIUM 



The interior of the Aquarium building is especially designed for the best arrangement 

 and grouping of the fifty large tanks in which the hundreds of unusual and gorgeously 

 colored fish can be seen and studied by the visitors. During the day the only illumination 

 within the corridors is the sunlight, which enters from skylights directly above each tank, 

 and the light thus diffused through the sea water within the tanks creates a very realistic 

 atmosphere of the ocean's depths. 



utes west), which, because of its ideal 

 location and equipment, will take rank 

 with the great aquariums of the world. 



HUMAN INTEREST IN THTv QUICK 



Humankind takes a deep interest in 

 animate things, and fish seem to have a 

 peculiar and potent appeal to man. The 

 child turns from toy and pet to gaze 

 Upon goldfish in a tiny bowl ; the adult 

 will sit by stream or in a boat by the hour 

 in the hope of landing a "string." An- 

 gling, in fact, makes the whole world re- 

 lated. It is one of the few sports that 

 knows no flag nor race. 



A striking proof of this interest is 

 manifested in the fact that each year the 

 visitors to the New York aquarium, lo- 

 cated on the tip of Manhattan Island, 

 ar< twice as many as those who go to the 

 more conspicuous and accessible Metro- 

 politan Museum of Art on upper Fifth 

 Avenue. 



May the reason of this fascination not 

 be the racial memory of that far-gone 

 time when our remote ancestors, still too 

 primitive to invent weapons to give them 

 sure advantage in hunting wild animals, 

 turned to stream and ocean inlet for a 

 palatable, abundant, and ever-ready food 

 supply ? 



The wonder is that science, which has 

 been defined as "intelligent curiosity," 

 should have waited so long to turn to 

 that field which offers a vast, unexplored 

 content of animal creation. That Protean 

 observer, Aristotle, studied fish life, but 

 from his day nearly twenty centuries in- 

 tervened before the Swedish savant, 

 Peter Artedi, "Father of Ichthyology," 

 met an untimely death by drowning in a 

 Holland canal, but left enough notes of 

 his observations to enable Linnaeus to 

 publish them (in 1738), and thus estab- 

 lish a starting point for modern study 

 of genus and species. 



