Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/31

Rh. The doorway leading to the aquarium is shown in the illustration; through it one passes into the main corridor, a long, dark, concreted room, lighted only through wall-tanks, displaying admirably the showy fauna of the gulf, to which, indeed, the aquarium is largely indebted for its high rank. Imbedded in the walls of the sides and of the main partition of the room there are in all about two dozen large aquaria. In these the water appears clear and blue; their background of rough rock work has been



so arranged that contrasts of bright lights and deep shadows throw in clear relief the colors of the marine life. In the first tank the visitor may find a collection of starfishes and sea urchins, some brilliant in color, clustering on the glass, each with a dim halo of pale, threadlike feet. In the background will be a living clump of crinoids, which flower out like a garden of stately and bright-colored lilies. A neighboring tank will be rich in dark seaweeds, and in its foreground a group of flying gurnards, reddish and brightly spotted, are feeling cautiously along the bottom with the fingerlike rays of their wing-shaped fins. Here, too, a small school of squid is swimming timidly to and fro like delicate and quick-moving fishes, and below them will perhaps be