Page:The Book of the Aquarium and Water Cabinet.djvu/80

70 , with, perhaps, some of the Polysiphoniæ will be considered valuable prizes, but they will not succeed in any but experienced hands, for whom this work is not written.

Dasya, Chylocladia, Nitophyllum, Griffithsia, Rhodymenia, and Ptilota will all contribute specimens as time goes on, and opportunity affords for obtaining them. But not one of these lovely weeds of the red class are fit for ordinary aquarian tactics, they are the “florists’ flowers” of the aquarian world, and refuse to be domesticated by any but adepts. The exquisitely delicate Griffithsia setacea is perhaps the only one of the above that may be safely used in a well-seasoned tank of artificial water; the other genera seem to be still more delicately constituted and to require their own native element in a state of great purity.

Once more I urge the beginner to be content with Ulva and Enteromorpha at starting, with half-a-dozen plants of each of these, a large and pleasing variety of animal life may be preserved, and in the case of disaster of any kind, these are the most readily restored to health by a little timely and judicious management.

All coarse and dark coloured weeds, however tempting at first sight, are to be avoided. The sprawling tangles that one steps over in traversing the boulders and the slimy masses of sea-weed, everywhere cast upon the coast, are quite unfit, however fine the specimens, or strong the desire to possess them. Neither must much value be attached to any weed cast up by the surge. The only trustworthy specimens are those chipped from the rock in situ and brought away without being detached from their natural basis.