KoT. IS. 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
S89 
at a slow speed when shot. Thinking this might interest 
some reader I write you the same. 
T.F. Thomas, while hunting: near the river bridge last 
April, shot a white pelican, which is a fine specimen and a 
rare bird for this locality. Any one can see the same by 
calling at his place of business. Bass. 
A Pit-fallen Moose. 
The moose was captured in a bear pit-fall by two Indians, 
who tied him up and took him on a sled to Halifax. Here 
he was turned out in an inclosure and was photographed at 
close range, while a companion of the photographer stood 
by with a rifle to be ready should- the moose charge the artist. 
The creature remained motionless for five minutes, and then, 
when the party had left the inclosure, "tore around at a 
great rate." In a few days the moose died, presumably of 
starvation. 
Proprietors of flsMng resorts will find it profitable to advertise 
them in Forest and Stream. 
The "Game Laws in Brief." 
The current edition of tlie Game Latcs in Brief (index pagre dated 
Aug. 1) contains the fish and game laws for 1897, with a few excep- 
tions, as they will continue in force during the year. As about forty 
States and Provinces have amended their laws this year, the Brief 
has been practically done over new. Sent postpaid by the Forest 
and Stream Pub. Co. on receipt of price, 25 cents. All dealers sell it 
THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM. 
BY FKED MATHEB, 
At last New York city has a free aquarium worthy of 
the name. The taste for aquaria and their uses as public 
educators has never become as popular in America as in 
Europe, but it is growing. Most of the aquaria there are 
built by companies as speculative affairs, and many pay fair 
dividends. 1 have seen most of them, studied their work- 
ings, and have watched the growtn of our new one at Bat- 
tery Park with great interest. I was at first disposed to be 
severe on the arrangement of the tanks in a plain, rigid 
semicircle, and the waste of floor space into great pools, 
where only seals and cetaceans can be displayed to advan- 
tage, for large fish do not show well in them, and that most 
uninteresting of all animals, the alligator, shows as well 
when stuffed, and is as active when carved from a log, as it 
is in life. I prefer the winding walks, caves, grottoes and 
surprises of the Berlin Aquarium, but when I visited the 
New York Aquariurn after its opening and saw that its 
being free crowded it to its capacity, it was apparent that 
the space required by the public was none too great, and 
that to have filled the interior with inclined passages, caves 
and grottoes, would, in the present building, have cramped 
the space which the crowds render necessary, and under the 
circumstances it is the best that could be done. 
Still, I regret that the old building did not afford the space 
for such a design, for I hold that a public aquarium should 
be more than a mere exhibition of living aquatic animals. 
In 1876 Messrs. Coup and Reiche built "The Great New 
York Aquarium" at Thirty-fifth street and Broadway, and 
the buiiaing is now the Herald Square Theatre. I was with 
them from the time of the opening until they quarreled 
about opening on Sunday, and Coup sold out and Reiche let 
it run down and closed it. They were showmen. Coup 
had been Barnum's business manager and a circus proprie- 
tor, and Reicbe was a dealer in wild animals. The latter 
wanted to run it as a beer garden on Sunday, hence the 
quarrel. Fifty cents was the price of admission. The 
aquarium, exclusive of the building, cost $70,000, of which 
$20,000 was paid by receipts at the door. My notes, dated 
Sept. 20, 1877, say: ''The gross receipts since opening, up 
to Sept. 15 (eleven months) have been $91,000, and will no 
doubt exceed $100,000 by the end of next month. The ex- 
pentes, including rent, $10,000, salaries, music, gas, adver- 
tising, collecting specimens and all otner items wiH not 
exceed $70,000 for the year." When Reiche got it he let it 
run down, the fishes all starved except the fresh-water gars, 
and the Aquarium closed. Under proper management it 
might be running yet, in wnich case the Battery Park 
Aquarium might not have been built. 
The new Aquarium was built under laws of the State of 
New York, Caap. 28, 1893, and Chap. 254, 1893. One 
hundred and fifty thousand dollars was appropriated under 
each of these laws, or $300,000 in all. The exact cost of the 
Aquarium is so merged in other bills that it is difficult to 
get at, for the acts authorizing the expenditures were: 
"For improving Castle Garden and grounds adjoining ana 
stocking Aquarium." Under this broad law the seawall 
was repaired, walks laid in Battery Park and the lawns 
sodded. Under the appropriation of 1892 there was ex- 
pended $149,953.15, and outside of an item of $31,700 for 
repairing the building, the following items occur: 
Dec, J, taking down and rebuilding walls, annex $ -S.SOO.OO 
June 9, Repairing, etc.. Battery sea wall 3,832.22 
June 30, Paving walijs, etc., Battery Park.,... I3,46l!77 
July 14, Sundry bUls 11,071.67 
Commissions...... , ».„.„. 4,149 89 
Pay rolls ...,44 3B,088.10 
These were all legitimate expenditures under the law, and 
are only cited to show that the Aquarium proper did not 
cost all the money which was appropriated for it and "the 
improving of the grounds," and having no figures at hand, I 
estimate Battery Park to cover between twenty and thirty 
acres, and as near as I can separate the items, and estimate 
the proportions of others, out of the $300,000 the Aquarium 
cost $175,000. 
There was a sad mistake in selecting the first superintend- 
ent, who planned the tanks, pipes and other apoaratus. He 
had no practical knowledge of aquaria, whatever, but had 
dabbled in sea shells and was posseised of some knowledge 
of their marketable value. He passed a Civil Service exam- 
ination, which was so quietly conducted that the very few 
men in America who have had experience in this most diffi- 
cult of all branches of natural history work, and with 
whom I have corresponded, never heard that such an exam- 
ination was to be held. He was appointed several months 
before I heard of it, and I read some New York daily seven 
days in the week, He was densely ignorant of aquarium 
matters, as I found in half an hour's talK and saw the white 
tiles with which he was lining his tanks, to the detriment of 
the eyes of fishes. 
But when I looked over the source of the salt-water sup- 
ply, 20ft. outside the Battery wall, I was astounded. For 
the benefit of people who do not know New York harbor, 
let me explain. At the confluence of the North (Hudson) 
and East rivers, at the southern end of Manhattan Island, 
on which the older city of New York stands, and from 
where its first settlement by the Dutch was made, is now 
the breathing spot called Battery Park. There was an 
ancient brick fort there called Port Clinton, which is well 
represented on an old platter recently presented to the Aqua- 
rium by Miss Mary D Earle and her nieces. Miss Alida Van 
Derwerken Earle and her sister, daughters of the late Cor- 
nelius D. Earle. It is framed and hangs in the lecture 
room, and shows Castle Garden when it stood apart from 
the mainland and was out in the harbor as a fort, connected 
with the island by a bridge. The intervening space was 
filled in long before the remembrance of any living New 
Yorker, and so the present park was made. 
The platter is about 18in. long and I4j-in. wide, and of a 
very dark blue. It is in perfect condition, The decoration 
of the border or rim of the platter is composed largely of 
marine shells. In the center background of the picture on 
the platter, appear Castle William and Governor's Island. 
On the back of the rim of the platter, at one end, in blue, is 
an eagle holding a shield, while from its beak flies a streamer 
upon which is the motto, "S Pi{?m'6?z8 TJmim." Under the 
eagle's claws appear the words: "Castle Garden, Battery, 
New York," At the other end, on the flat part of the plat- 
ter, is the impression of a stamp containing an eagle and the 
names of the makers, in Burslem, which is in Staffordshire, 
England. 
This platter is valuable evidence in the case of the im- 
proved supply of saltwater. 1 was so surprised at the taking 
of salt water from the harbor at the Battery wall that noth- 
ing could be said for a moment. Memory ran back some 
eighteen years, to the time when we would not run a pipe 
to tbe North River at Thirty-fifth street, but brought up the 
salt water from outside Sandy Hook on tugs, and then in 
street-sprinkling carts to the old Aquarium, where we used 
it over and over again, the best of all systems except the 
natural filter now in use at Battery Park, which may or 
may not have been suggested to Dr. Bean by the old platter. 
After tbinking how the great city poured its foul sewage 
into both rivers, which, at every ebb tide, united at their 
junction at the end of Battery Park, 1 ventured the question: 
"Do you expect to get good water where the sewers from 
both rivers meet?" 
"Well, now," said the self-satisfied man, "I've looked that 
all over and find that at 25ft. from this wall the water is 
pure. At 30ft. or at 20ft. it isn't; but where my pipe ends 
there is a back-roll of good sea water from Gov- 
ernor's Island, where the currents strike and rebound, send- 
ing us good water." 
I knew nothing of the rebound, and asked: "How 
about storms from the east, when the water is driven past 
Governor's Island and overpowers the flow of the Hud- 
son?" 
"That will make no difference; if the sewers bring down 
foul water, we have the best filters in the world to purify 
it." 
The ignorance of the man staggered me. He seemed to 
think that chemical impurities could be filtered out like 
sand, and I ventured to ask: "If a spoonful of sugar is dis- 
solved in a glass of water, or the flow of the sewers into the 
rivers should come to the pipe beyond the wall, do you think 
your filters would take out the foulness?" 
He believed that it would, and I believed that he knew 
nothing about the difference between an impurity in solu- 
tion and one held in suspension, and I came near asking if a 
filter would remove an odor from water, but decided not to 
argue the question. 
The Aquarium dragged along slowly through part of '92, 
the whole of the next two years, and people began to wonder 
why it was not completed. A few inquiries revealed the 
fact that the Commissioners of Public Parks were not push- 
ing the work for some reason, and the reason soon appeared 
when they appointed a committee to examine the work. This 
committee reported unfavorably, and the superintendent 
moved out. Dr. Tarleton H. Bean, formerly Assistant U. S. 
Fish Commissioner, was appointed superintendent in May, 
1895, and found that the tanks would not hold water, the 
pipes were too small to carry off the drainage, and the whole 
plant, except the engines and pumps, had to be remodeled. 
Then the salt water was foul, as it naturally would be from 
what I have shown of its point of intake, and after learning 
that the Aquarium stood on made land, the new superin- 
tendent dug down under that portion of the building nearest 
the city, put in a lOin. suction pipe and got a flow of good 
salt water in whicn fishes from the clear, clean waters of the 
Gulf Stream live, and in which hermit crabs remain in their 
shells. To an Aquarium expert the sight of a hermit leav- 
ing its shell, unless to change for another one, is an unfailing 
sign of bad water. 
All these changes took along time, as they always do where 
there is work to be done for a city, or a State, with the con- 
sultations, approval of recommendations and the circumlo- 
cution which we call "red tape." Some newspapers howled 
about the delay and selected Dr. Bean as the target for their 
shafts, and assumed that he was responsible for the delay; 
but he said nothing to the newspapers, and kept on getting 
ready to give the nublic an opening which would not have 
to.be closed for repairs the next week. 
The Aquarium was formally opened on Dec. 10, 1896, 
when it was visited by 11,531 people, by actual count of the 
register. The daily attendance has been as high as 21,456 in 
one day, and averaged over 10,000 per day for tne first 
seven months, which shows the great popularity of a public 
aquarium. 
In this preliminary article it is not intended to give any 
account of the inhabitants of the tanks. That may be post- 
poned while we take into consideration the great difficulties 
an aquarist has to contend with. Animals which live on 
the earth are subject to sudden changes of temperature; fishes 
are not, for large bodies of water change slowly, and migra- 
tory fishes avoid a change while many fresh-water species 
become semi-torpid. Then, some forms of marine life are 
annoyed by the light, which is a necessity in an aquarium ; 
but the most severe test to most marine fishes, and to some 
fresh-water ones, like the lake trout and the whitefishes, is 
the absence of pressure. The giant lobsters and many other 
marine animals died from what 1 may call the "rarity" of 
the water. All mountain clim> ers have experienced distress 
in high places, and I have seen the nostrils of pack-mules 
slit in order to let more air into their lungs, while men were 
panting at the slightest exertion. Fish brought up suddenly 
from great depths turn their stomachs out of their mouths 
because the Inside pressure is greatest, and there are few 
marine fishes which can live with only a pressure of 4ft. of 
water on them. , 
When we consider a display of the salmons, trouts, white- 
fish and smelts in an aquarium, the question of temperature 
is a vital one. In winter these fishes are comfortable, but 
the casual visitor in summer does not see the refrigerating ap- 
paratus which is necessary to the life of these specimens, and 
may only detect its presence by condensed moisture on the 
glass. There is no end of problems to be solved in an aqua- 
rium. The duration of life of some fishes in confinement is 
comparatively short, while other forms live and thrive in the 
tanks. The interesting little sea horses never live long either 
in balanced tanks or in flowing water although fed with the 
minute Crustacea on which they live when at liberty. A 
balanced tank is usually a small one, such as is suitable for 
home ornament and study, and in which the water is never 
changed, the only new water used is to replace that lost by 
evaporation. It may be filled with either fresh or salt-water, 
and is stocked with plants which grow submerged, and 
throw off what oxygen the fish require; for fishes extract 
oxygen from the water to aerate their blood, as we extract it 
from the air for the same purpo.9e. Too much plant life or 
light, and the glass becomes covered with vegetation; too 
much animal life, and some of it dies. A properly balanced 
tank has just enough of each kind of life; the carbonic acid 
gas thrown off by the fishes is consumed by the plants, and 
so the balance is maintained. 
In the lecture room, where the general public does not go, 
thefe are some interesting balanced tanks with both fresh 
water and marine spscimeus in which the water has not 
been changed for over a year. Mr. Spencer has charge of 
these, and delights to show them to those who appreciate 
the beauties of the smaller aquatic life, but the mass of the 
people would pass by these without a glance. What they 
want is size, all else is "caviare" to them. The antics of 
the seals interest them more than anything in the building, 
judging by the crowd which ia always about their tanks. 
The late Mr. Lloyd, the superintendent of the Aquarium in 
the late Crystal Palace, London, and in his day the best 
aquarium authority, would not admit any lung-breathing 
animal into an aquarium. He even went so far as to refuse 
a place to the newts, turtles and frogs. His rule was: "The 
animals must not be lung-breathers ; that is to say, they must 
be either such as the sea anemones and corals and some 
others which have the function of respiration diffused over 
their entire bodies, or be such as the creatures above them 
(up to and ending with fishes), which are provided with gills 
during their whole period or existence." This rule would 
admit the tadpoles, but not the frog nor the salamander, but 
then Lloyd was cranky on such things* 
His aquarium was devoid of all ornament, and he was 
offensively blunt m condemning my taste for caves and 
grottoes, which he said did not accord with the plain floors 
beneath them, and which tried to make the visitor believe 
that he was under the sea when he was not; and he scolded 
about "bad taste" like a fishwife. Many of his small table- 
tanks were so low that the visitor looked down into them, 
and it was my turn when he asked me how I liked them. 
"Mr. Lloyd," said I, "they are the worst lot I've seen. If 
I was in charge here they would be raised antil the eye of 
the visitor was below the waterline. The worst possible 
view to get of a fish is to look down on its back. 
"That's the only natural way to see a fish," he replied. 
"When you are on the bank of a stream or in a boat, don't 
you look down on the back of a fish? Why not in an 
aquarium?" 
"Because most fishes look alike from a dorsal view, and the_ 
bright colors are usually on the sides." 
"I care nothing for that," he snapped out; "what I want 
is to follow nature and have no tomfoolery, " and he walked off. 
I let him go for a while. He was all right on his manage- 
ment of water and keeping fish alive, but he was notional 
and irritable. 1 smoothed his fur by talking about his re- 
markably clear sea water, wnich he stored in reservoirs and 
used over and over all the time, and we parted friends. 
In this article 1 mentioned the great pools in the floor of 
the Battery Park Aquarium, and lUe above conversation re- 
calls another. Somo time ago I said to Dr. Bean: "That 
big sturgeon would show off twice as large if you had a tank 
higher up to show it in. Looking down upon it does not 
even give a fair idea of its length. If you had such a tank 
as our -shark tank' in the old Tnirty-fifth street aquarium it 
would show splendidly." 
"That's true, but we have no such tank. How big was 
that one?" 
"As memory recalls it, 35Xl3ft.' were about its dimen- 
sions; a 10ft. shark could turn easily in it. You should 
have such a tank as that. These pools in the floor are only 
good for seals, cetaceans and crocodiles, and they are not 
very good for them. Our whale tank in the old aquarium was 
only 2ft. below the floor, and the water was 4ft. above it, so 
that you could see the whale broadside. Fill up all these 
holes in the floor and build them up." 
The superintendent looked at me more in sorrow than in 
anger, and replied: "1 did not build the tanks." 
"No, 1 know you didn't; but here's this big circular whale 
tank, some 30 or 40ft. in diameter, with the sides slanting 
inward, probably to prevent splashing the spectators. 
There's a big barn-door skate right under us, and but half 
of it can be seen because of the faulty build of the pool, and 
if the fish was on the other side we couldn't see it at all." 
"You are very critical," said Dr. Bean, "and there is 
mucn truth in what you say; but there's no use in talking to 
me about these things, I took the place as I found it, and 
have done what I could to improve it. Perhaps if you were 
in my place you would not be so critical; all things can't be 
done at once, have patience." 
That la.st remark was a correct one. If I were in his place 
this article would not be written, but as I am a free lance I 
may tilt at pleasure, and will further say: Tne aquarium is 
under the immediate charge of the Park Commissioners of 
the city of New York. These Commissioners are appointed 
by the Mayor, and may be more or less interested in tne 
matters which are likely to come before them, but, if they 
were the best men in the world for the place, they would be 
removed at the first political change. Within a few days a 
new Mayor will be elected, and wfien he takes his seat ou 
New Year's Day, he will probably have a few political 
friends to reward with places, and the Park Board will pro- 
vide for a few. 
This is the worst possible state of affairs for the Aquarium. 
A man may know a lot about parks, botany, roadways and 
landscape gardening, but in the city of New York there are 
not a dozcn men who have a superficial knowledge of 
how an aquarium should be run, and in the whole United 
States there are not ai3 many capable aquarium superintend- 
ents, 
