Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/37

Rh the water measures over twelve feet, giving a depth which results in an enormous pressure upon the glass fronts of the aquaria. This dangerous strain, however, has been cleverly counterbalanced: instead of attempting to employ a large plate of glass to resist the water pressure, the designers have prudently broken the front of the tank into a series of stouter panes, whose outlines are larger above, smaller below, framed massively by log-shaped beams of iron. Rockwork has been largely employed as the background of the aquaria, and the great water depth has favored the use of delicate strings of vertically growing water plants. At present the tanks are almost entirely stocked with fresh-water forms. Adjoining the main corridor has been added a laboratory devoted to experiments in fish culture. Here the hatching troughs are arranged in vertical banks to give the cascadelike waterflow recommended by the earlier culturists.

—Like that of the Trocadero, the Berlin Aquarium, next to be mentioned, ranks among the earliest in Europe, it having been opened, under the directorship of Dr. Brehm, in 1869. From that time onward its success has been remarkable—none the less so that its foundation and management have been due to private enterprise, in the form of a stock company. And to its credit it may safely be said that there has been no other aquarium in Europe which has appealed to a greater number of people and has accomplished its object with greater tact or at the cost of greater efforts.

A visit to the aquarium has come to be one of the interesting sights of Berlin, and the stranger has but little difficulty in finding its tall, stuccoed, buff-colored building at the corner of one of the streets crossing Unter den Linden, although he may feel at first, perhaps, inward qualms at finding the grotto-planned aquarium, of which he has so often heard, incased by a building which differs in no way outwardly from its apartment-house-looking neighbors. He is apt, therefore, to look about him somewhat suspiciously when he discovers that its entrance is strangely theaterlike: there are the box office, the flight of marble steps, the walls over-frescoed with mermaids, the lines of posters, to carry him to its threshold. The serpent gallery is the first to be entered—a long, iron-arched, well-lighted corridor, with glass or wire-fronted cases on either side. This seems to be intended as the vestibule of the aquarium proper, where the curious visitor can whet his appetite on the sight of tarantulas, land turtles, and lizards before he descends into what seems like the mouth of a huge cavern; for from here onward the walls are of rough stone-work, and there are rock-cut steins and darkened stone-arched passageways to lead the visitor from grotto to grotto as he wanders along, gazing at the aquaria on either side. The grotto