U. 
THE NEW YORK AQUARIUM JOURNAL. 
THE WAIL OF THE WHALE, 
The lights were all out—it was midnight— 
The fishes were all fast asleep ; 
When groans from the Whale broke the silence, 
And a voice rose as if from the deep. 
The Fish Frog, awoke from his slumbers, 
- ' '•••"'•.If naig"; “" 
But he smiled as of yore when he listened 
To this heart-rending wail of the Whale. 
“ Here am I, who have roamed the broad ocean, 
Under watch kept; yes, more under Ward. 
Shut up in a tank for a prison, 
Indeed by a Coup I am barred. 
Fish and Eels I am fed by the bushel, 
As if they could eel up my woe. 
'Tis not in my food I’m deyfsA-ent, 
That I come to the surface to ‘ blow.' 
Look there at that lazy Sea Lion, 
Whom I hate to sea lion about. 
He’s free. Why? To quote from Dundreary,— 
‘That’s something no fellow finds out.’ 
I’ve scalped my poor nose on these glasses, 
But to fly my attempts are in vain. 
What’s the use of these Tweed-like endeavors, 
When panes only add to my pain ? 
There’s a Saw-fish not very far from me— 
I’m afraid he’ll escape from his tank ; 
If so, some fine morning they’ll .ind me 
With my body sawed up into plank. 
The Devil Fish glares at me fiercely; 
He’s wild and ferocious they say. 
If I ever get into his dutches 
There’ll be the Fish Devil to pay. 
I miss ye, O floes of the far north, 
O icebergs from me far away, 
But one nautical berg’s left to hear me, 
That’s Bergh of the S. P. Sea —A. 
But my vengeance shall be a severe one ; 
They’ll find that I’m far from a dupe. 
My ancestor swallowed one prophet — 
I’ll swallow all profits — of Coup. P. B. 
THE AQUARIUM, 
PART I.-ITS FORMATION AND MANAGEMENT. 
Of late years it has become almost a fashion to 
cultivate water-plants, and to establish aquaria, 
not only in private houses—on a small scale—but 
in magnificent and expensive buildings, and with 
all the attendant conditions of committees, boards 
of directors, and shareholders. With these great 
establishments we have little to do at present. 
We visit and admire them ; and we think that 
the difficulties to be overcome in arriving at the 
perfect balance of animal and vegetable life, so 
as to make one dependent on the other, are a 
study which must certainly inculcate sanitary 
principles in the minds of all who have to do 
with them. Without scientific knowledge on the 
part of the managers, these great establishments 
could not exist; and without some apprehension 
of the principles which regulate all life, the hum¬ 
blest little aquarium, be it only a stickleback and 
a bit of water-weed in a pickle bottle, must dis¬ 
appoint its owner. A vessel of water containing 
plants and animals must be looked upon as a 
little world ; it may, in fact, be so constructed as 
to have no communication with the great world 
in which it exists, and of which it forms a part, 
and yet all its inhabitants live and prosper. If 
we put a living fish into a jar or globe of water, 
it dies in the course of a few days, unless the 
water be changed ; but if we put it into cold 
boiled water, it dies in a few minutes ; and no 
amount of fresh cold boiled water will keep it 
alive. If, however, we put into the water some 
plants which naturally grow there, and get them 
established so that they do grow, our fish will 
live for any length of time without a change of 
water. How is all this? What caused the 
death of the fish in the boiled water/ and why • 
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problerfis whit a must be understood ana solved 
by all who wish to keep a healthy aquarium. 
Moreover, the same principles apply to any col¬ 
lection of water plants and animals, whether they 
live in the sea or in fresh water, and the same 
laws must be obeyed. The animal, whether it 
be a gold-fish, or a cod-fish, or a many-colored 
sea-anemone, has need of fresh air, and its life 
depends on the presence of oxygen in the water, 
which it appropriates and which freshens its 
blood, just as much as we who live in the air 
require a supply of the same life-supporting gas. 
All water, therefore, to support lile, must con¬ 
tain the gas called oxygen. Naturally it does so, 
as it descends from the clouds in the form of 
rain, or bubbles up from the earth a sparkling 
spring, or rolls down to the sea in rivers, forming 
the great ocean itself. It never loses its oxygen 
gas, save as it is used up by the animals that live 
in it, but which is again supplied by the numer¬ 
ous plants which bathe and grow in its depths. 
We may give our fish a good supply of pure 
fresh water full of oxygen, but after a while the 
oxygen becomes-exhausted and the fish dies ; so 
by boiling water, the necessary oxygen gas is 
expelled from it, and it cannot support life. 
But now we find that plants growing in the 
water remedy all this, and if properly and skill¬ 
fully managed in a fresh-water aquarium, will 
render it unnecessary to change the water for 
many months, perhaps years. This can easily 
be understood, if we take a water-plant in a jar 
of water and place it in the sunlight for a few 
hours. We soon see little streams of sparkling 
bubbles rising to the surface of the water—-these 
little bubbles consisting of pure oxygen. The 
leaves of all growing and healthy plants give off 
oxygen, the great source of the life-sustaining 
power not only of the atmosphere, but of the 
water. We now see why fish will live in water 
with growing plants, and die without them. But 
the mutual relation between plants and animals, 
as carried on in the world, extends even farther 
than this, and is not altered at all because they 
live in water. Not only do the plants produce 
oxygen for the animals to live on, but they ap* 
propriate and use up in their own tissues the 
carbonic acid gas thrown off by the animals. 
Unless this mutual arrangement existed, both 
plants and animals would die. Carbonic acid, 
which is poisonous to animals, is absorbed by 
the plants—it is composed of carbon and oxy- 
gen—and plants have the power of separating 
and using the carbon for their own substance, 
and letting go the oxygen. 
Thus we find in a jar of water a true micro¬ 
cosm—a little world, in which all the changes 
go on which are necessary for the maintenance 
of the life of man and animals on the surface of 
the earth. Our little water-world too—be it 
even our humble pickle-bottle aquarium—is 
subject to all the laws of health of which we now 
hear so much. Over-crowding is one fruitful 
source of disease and death in our collections, 
and we must be very careful only to attempt to 
keep as much animal life as our growing plants 
are sufficient to supply with oxygen. Experi¬ 
ence is the best teacher in these matters, for we 
cannot so exactly measure the cubic feet of water 
necessary for the life of a fish, as of air for the 
life of a land-animal. Even in the best regu¬ 
lated aqua'ic establishments, death will occur 
and decomposition set in, which, if suffered to 
remain, soon spread disaster through the tank. 
We have scavengers in the air in the shape of 
vultures and carrion crows; in the water, in 
crocodiles, sturgeons, water-beetles, snails; and 
it is necessary to provide some of the latter useful 
creatures for our aquatic community. In a 
small aquarium, we would advise tome one or 
two of the varieties of moilusca, such as waer- 
snails ; due care, however, must be taken that 
they confine their appetites to the garbage and 
decaying matters of the establishment, and do 
not devour our living plants. 
.tfflr-trftft-ii 
an aquarium, and giving suggestions as to its 
establishment, we recall very vividly the early 
efforts to keep water-creatures living and thriving 
in our homes as in their own native streams. It 
cannot be doubted that the first idea was ; ug- 
gested by Mr. N. B. Ward’s successful cultiva¬ 
tion of plants in glass cases. As early as 1849, 
Mr. Ward stated at a meeting of the British As¬ 
sociation at Oxford, that he had succeeded not 
only in growing sea-weeds in sea-water, but in 
sea-water artificially made. This may be con¬ 
sidered to be the fir a t step towards the marine 
aquarium. In 1849, Dr. Lankester succeeded 
in keeping sticklebacks in a jar of fresh water 
containing growing Valisneria (a water-plant) 
and starwort; and in 1850, Mr. Warrington read 
a paper before the Chemical Society explaining 
the conditions necessary to the growth ol plants 
and animals in jars of water. 
Mr. Alford Lloyd, who is a great authority on 
aquaria and their management, tells us that in 
1853 he began to make his earliest experiments 
with a»few small glass jars and an earthenware 
foot-pan. At that period there was nothing to 
guide any one as to how they should proceed— 
neither books nor men ; and so the real lovers 
of nature groped their way alone, encouraged by 
every fresh success to new experiments. Well 
can we recollect the modest glass jars with the 
gleanings from ponds passed in country rambles 
—the bits of weed growing in shingie at the 
bottom of the jar, with the sticklebacks, a water- 
spider or two, and a few water-snails, which 
graced and animated the study of a large-hearted 
philosopher and. born naturalist who has lately 
passed away from us. Dear to our memory also 
is the row of tumblers of sea-water outside a cot¬ 
tage window-ledge in a small sea-side village on 
the coast of Suffolk, placed there by the same 
nature-loving hands, each glass containing a bit 
of rock or stone to which was attached a bright- 
colored actinia (sea-anemone), which, under the 
influence of the light, expanded and glorified 
itself into an animated flower. Many a group 
of wondering and admiring villagers has stood 
