A PRACTICAL JOURNAL OF 
HOME ARTS. 
Vol. hi. NEW YOKE, SEPTEMBER, 1880. No. 9. 
landscapes (for when not collecting I was 
trying to learn to draw), I had become 
tired of myself. I had tried and tried to 
acquire the beauty and "touch" of his 
penciling, but had utterly failed. So, out 
of sorts, and out of humor with myself 
and things in general, I started for my 
favorite pond and woods (I had got to call- 
ing the woods and streams my big medi- 
cine, for in them I lost all my troubles). 
In this particular pond grew many varie- 
ties of plants ; the water teemed with 
animal life ; many birds had built their 
nests in the shrubbery that grew on its 
margin, and a full orchestra of tree toads 
and various kinds of frogs were in attend- 
ance as nature's musicians. 
When I reached this pond I proceeded 
to spread out the many newspapers that I 
had brought with me to wrap the plants 
in. In one of them my attention was at- 
tracted by an announcement in large type 
of a wonderful young man from the East, 
who had been secured to take charge of 
the aquaria at Barnum's Museum (the old 
museum), whose knowledge of fish was 
something astonishing, so much so that 
he knew their language, etc., etc., etc. 
When I began reading this article I was 
standing up ; when I got half way through 
A Breakfast for a Whale— What it Was, 
and How it was Got. 
BY A. W. ROBERTS. 
ANY people 
who try to keep 
an aquarium 
fail in their ef- 
forts, because 
they think that 
fish can find in 
the water all 
the food that 
they require. 
The extraor- 
dinary quanti- 
t i e s which 
some marine 
animals require was very fully impressed 
upon my mind upon one occasion, when I 
had to provide a breakfast for a whale ; 
and although, strictly speaking, a whale is 
not a fish, yet the lesson is the same, and 
I will therefore relate my experience. 
One hot sultry afternoon, when trying 
to copy one of Birket Foster'^s beautiful 
