Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/36

24 basement floor has been devoted to the interests of the general visitor, and a well-chosen collection representing the Channel fauna can be studied in its well-arranged tanks. The important work of the station in connection with the British fisheries, added to its exceptional advantages in collecting material, gives Plymouth an important rank among marine aquariums.

—At Paris the Aquarium of the Trocadero was in its day—for it stands among the oldest—regarded as the foremost of Europe. At present, however, its condition is somewhat degenerate, and it is apt, partly on this account, to give the critical observer an unfavorable if not disappointing impression upon his first visit. It is ill kept, wet, and untidy; its tanks are poorly cared for and very imperfectly stocked; and the general absence of attendants has permitted many attempts at diamond writing on the costly glass plates of the tanks. These defects, however, do not prevent the visitor from finally recognizing the interesting



features of the aquarium. Its plan of construction, as in the earlier designs, is typically grottolike. Its main hall is subterranean, and the tanks appear at the surface amid a thicket of overhanging bushes, like a ring of natural pools. The public entrance is cavernous—a descent of rough-hewn rock steps, margined by clumps of ferns and a small but noisy waterfall. The main corridor seems particularly dark and cool, none the less so when the eye comes to note the row of tank outlines and sees in their bluish water the chilly movements of trout. The corridor is ring-shaped, its side walls consisting of the faces of large aquaria, nine in the peripheral margin and two in the central, the latter separated by an alleyway in the line of the diameter of the ring. The great height of the tanks is particularly noteworthy; in some