THE FAMILY AQUARIUM. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE CHARACTERISTICS OF AN AQUARIUM.. 



"Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord 

 which thou lettest down?" — Book of Job, chap. xli. 



human probability, his skeleton would now be on 



exhibition at Barnum^s Museum. The sea-serpent, 

 like the mermaid, has hitherto been considered a poetic 

 myth, visible only to imaginative sailors, and the more 

 enterprising keepers of neglected ocean-bathing places. 

 Yet many a monster may have escaped the vast destruc- 

 tion of animal life that seems to have accompanied the 

 deluge ; may not some of them, driven from the land as 

 perilous associates for the teeming population thenceforth 

 destined for the new-born earth, have become fitted, at 

 length, to remain the imprisoned denizens of the world 

 beneath the sea ? May they not still enjoy the unabbrevi- 

 ated age vouchsafed to all existences before the flood ? 

 May they not roam, from age to age, the stormless depths 



LEVIATHAN may not be caught, or, in all 



1* 



9 



