Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/28

Rh November or March, when the shrieking blasts drive furiously up the Channel, and the huge mountain-billows, green and white, open threatening graves on every side, how welcome would be a safe harbour, easy of access, and placed at a part of the coast, which else would be unsheltered for many leagues on either side! Blessed be God for the gift of his beloved Son, the only Harbour of Refuge for poor tempest-tossed sinners! We may think lightly of it now, but in the coming day of gloom and wrath, when "the rain descends, and the floods come, and the winds blow," they only will escape who are sheltered there!

This visit to Weymouth was immediately connected with the Marine Aquarium. Those of my readers who have honoured my 'Rambles on the Devonshire Coast' with their perusal, may remember the experiments I have there recorded, on the making of such an invention practicable in London, and other inland towns, and my anticipations of success. Early in December, 1852, I put myself into communication with the Secretary of the Zoological Society, and the result was the transfer of a small collection of Zoophytes and Annelides, which I had brought up from Ilfracombe, and which I had kept for two months in vases in London,—to one of the tanks in the new Fish House just erected in the Society's Gardens in the Regent's Park. This little collection thus became the nucleus and the commencement of the Marine Aquarium afterwards exhibited there.

It was in consequence of an engagement to supply