Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/257

 NOTES BY THE WAY.

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��of fifty-two pages of letterpress well printed on good paper. Besides this there were, including the cover, forty-four pages of advertisements, representing about a thousand different advertisers. The value of these to the proprietors probably exceeds twelve hundred pounds.

The Field has long abandoned its record of current events, the space being required for its own special subjects ; but there are many articles of general interest. Those in the number just mentioned include ' Travel and Colonisation,' and ' A Summer Holiday in Newfoundland.' Mr. C. Holmes Cautley gives some extracts from an old Styrian game-book. These afford a glimpse of country life in Styria from the 12th of July, 1636, to Martinmas, 1643. The patriarch of the staff, Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier, makes another W. B. contribution to the history of " vanishing London " in a paper on Tegetmeier the close of the Aquarium, " the last of the pseudo-scientific in- stitutions." He remarks how singular it is that all such institutions should come to grief. His reminiscences include the menagerie His reminis- at Exeter Change, where he saw the elephant Chuny. Chuny had to be shot, and the other animals were removed to the site of the National Gallery, and thence to the Surrey Gardens. The body of Chuny was stuffed, and placed in the Museum at Saffron Walden. At the Exhibition of 1851 it was a prominent feature in the Indian Court, covered as it was with gorgeous trappings. Mr. Tegetmeier also remembers the exhibition of the skeleton of a gigantic whale in a large temporary building erected across Trafalgar Square ; the Adelaide Gallery, at the end of the Lowther Arcade, organized for the popular exhibition of scientific inventions ; the Polytechnic ; the Panopticon ; and, last, the Aquarium, designed as a winter garden and promenade, which could be utilized by members of the House of Commons, whilst the science of fish culture could be exhibited. Mr. W. A. Lloyd was the manager. The tanks were well stocked with different species. The large quantity of salt water required was a great expense. Mr. Lloyd was most enthusiastic in his studies of the habits of fish. He watched them so constantly that their mode of progression became reflected in his own. In The Athenceum of the 1st of April, 1871, he gave a sketch of the history of ' Aquaria.' An obituary notice of him appeared in the same paper on the 24th of July, 1880. I am glad to know that Mr. Tegetmeier, although retired, is still (September, 1808) hale and hearty at the age of ninety-three.

In all these cases the scientific excitement soon waned. Mr. Tegetmeier relates that at the Adelaide Gallery a greater attraction was the exhibition of Madame Wharton and her troupe. The Panopticon became converted into the Alhambra, under the success- ful management of Mr. John Hollingshead. The Polytechnic is now a useful educational institution. The sudden death on

��'Aquaria.'

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