616 Aquaria: Their Past, Present, and Future. [ October, 
company, in London, his first aquarium, a fresh-water one, fol- 
lowed, in 1851-52, by his first marine aquarium. These he 
described in the periodicals of the day, and also in a lecture 
which he gave at the Royal Institution, in an interesting manner, 
and naturally from a chemist’s point of view. At about the 
same period Mr. P. H. Gosse commenced his earliest marine 
aquarium, as did Dr. J. S. Bowerbank, Dr. Cotton, and the late 
Dr. E. Lankester, and the successes attained by these experi- 
menters induced the Zodlogical Society of London to determine 
to have a public aquarium in its gardens in Regent’s Park. 
The building for this purpose was erected in the spring and sum- 
mer of the year 1852. The marine and fresh-water animals 
were begun to be introduced in the late autumn; the following 
winter and spring were wisely spent in experimenting on the 
best modes of operating, and the exhibition was opened on May 
21, 1853. After having been noticed in print by the Athe- 
næum of some months earlier, it was again commented upon 
by that journal of May 28th, and by the Illustrated London 
News of the same day and year, the latter publication giving 
views of two tanks. One of the earliest services which this 
institution conferred on biological literature may be seen in 
portions of the natural history division of the English Cyclo- 
pedia (an adaptation of the earlier Penny Cyclopedia), as 
the former publication appeared fortnightly, commencing in the 
spring of 1853; and as it was edited by Dr. E. Lankester, who 
always took much interest in aquaria, he mentions in the boo 
from time to time that such and such animals named had been 
kept in this Regent’s Park aquarium, to which he gave the need- 
lessly long name of “ aquavivarium.” This place was my ons 
much loved and earliest place of natural history studies, and in 
August, 1853, I too arranged a little domestic aquarium of my 
own — a fresh-water one. Later in the same year I set up * 
small marine one, or rather a series of little aquaria in glass jars, 
holding from half a pint to a pint each. Seldom has a student 
begun with such very small means as I then possessed, for my 
sea-water was compounded of salts purchased at a London chem- 
ist’s shop, and my animals were such little sea-anemones aS 
could find uninjured on oyster shells thrown into London streets. 
I was in earnest, however, and the difficulties I was 80 closely 
beset with, and they alone, enabled me to gain subsequent s¥@ 
cess. In the earlier books on aquaria — notably in Mr. Grosse 
two volumes, his Devonshire Coast and his Aquarium ( the 
