A HAPPY FAMILY. 
51 
a gabbling noisy crew as our parrots; and fortunately we 
can give our visitors a choice between fountains and 
water-gardens, tropical and British ferns, and homely 
songsters; or accommodate them with the scientific 
seclusion of a cabinet stocked with living and dead 
insects, aquatic larvae that glide about like ghosts, 
beetles that kick and plunge in their vessels of water 
like imps on the verge of despair, together with tame 
spiders, toads, frogs, and snakes, and a very attractive 
display of stuffed quadrupeds and birds, and some pre¬ 
pared and mounted skeletons of various animals. This 
cabinet-room is my own especial pleasure; cara sposa only 
finds her way there occasionally; and, indeed, none but 
choice scientific friends, who have sufficient enthusiasm 
to stare themselves tired with a compound microscope, 
or feed their imaginations into a “fierce frenzy" by 
discussing the technologies of entomological nomencla¬ 
ture, ever get permission, much less invitations, to enter 
it. The most attractive things there are the Aquaria 
and water-cabinets, which together fill up the window- 
spaces, and shut out a large portion of the daylight. 
In the right-hand window stands the river-tank, pellucid 
as crystal, and luxuriant with many forms of bright- 
green vegetation. Within it five-and-thirty fishes glide 
and gambol, and exhibit their several habits and in¬ 
stincts. I should not mention this as a part of our 
happy family were it not so in reality. In that vessel 
more than three-fourths of the finny innocents are as 
tame as cats; they know me, love me, and not only feed 
from my hand, but assemble when I call them, and obey 
my every look and motion as readily as if they were 
E £ 
