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R its tic A dorn men Is . 
—thus carrying with it constantly a certain amount of atmospheric air. A jar 
fitted with a bung in which a small hole has been pierced will be found the 
simplest and most easily obtained form of dropping aerater. It scarcely need 
be said it must be suspended mouth downwards. Better than that is a bell- 
glass of the kind made for bee-hives, the top being perforated for ventilation. 
Into the ventilating hole fit a cork that will allow the water to pass in 
drops. Suspend it by a cord passing over a pulley. Fill it at the surface, 
and draw it up ; when empty fill again, and so on for ever. 
The feeding of the animals must not be neglected. The best food is the 
fresh flesh of a mussel or oyster cut very small. Lacking such pabulum, minute 
morsels of raw mutton or beef may be employed, but no vegetable substance 
is admissible. For example, a few crumbs of bread may be considered poison 
to a marine aquarium, though in a river tank such food is always acceptable 
in moderation. It will not do to drop in bits of meat, whether of oyster or 
mutton, indiscriminately. The little morsels must be guided to the mouths 
that are to eat them. The always hungry opelet, Anthea cereus , will almost 
always eat all it can get, and help itself to a little fish occasionally as well. 
Many of the smaller kinds will never take a scrap of food when it is offered, 
but will close their flowery tentacles as the meat reaches them, and there it 
will lie untouched for hours, perhaps will never be taken at all. It is of the 
utmost importance to study the art of feeding, for every scrap of food is a 
possible element of mischief, its rapid decomposition may render the water 
turbid and poisonous, and cause the death of every creature in the tank. If 
you are not already tired of directions, please pay attention to what follows. 
Anemones are not naturally accustomed to butchers’ meat, and hence they are 
apt to deal with it differently to food they are born to. A limpet may be 
sucked in alive, all its soluble parts may be appropriated, and the shell at last 
cast out as “rubbish to the void.” The anemone has but one orifice. It takes 
food and absorbs from it all the nourishment it contains, and casts up what 
remains. Observe the consequences : when you give them morsels of meat 
they may or may not take them in ; but if they do, they cast them up again. 
Now, do not, when you see the little mites of white meat lying upon their 
tentacles, or on the pebbles beside them, hastily conclude they have not been 
accepted, for the probability is, that they have been swallowed and digested, 
and are but the gastric ghosts of what they were. However, the lesson of the 
case is that these unsightly bits must be removed, and there is a very simple 
way of accomplishing it by the use of the dipping tube. This is a glass tube 
