Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/70

contain will injure both fish and plant. Try to make your aquarium a miniature lake in all its details, and you will find the effect more pleasing to the eye. By making the artificial home of the aquatic creatures conform as nearly as possible to their natural ones you can keep them all in a healthy and lively condition.

At the bird-stores and other places where objects in natural history are sold, you may buy an aquarium of almost any size you wish, from the square tank with heavy iron castings to the small glass globe; the globes come in ten sizes.

Some time ago, when the author, then quite a small boy, was spending the summer upon the shores of Lake Erie, the older members of the household frequently went out on the lake after black bass, taking with them for bait a pail of the beautiful "painted minnows" found in the little brooks of Northern Ohio. Upon the return of a fishing party the minnows left in the pail were claimed by the children as their share of the spoils, but the little fish would scarcely live a day; in spite of all that could be done they would, one by one, turn upon their backs and expire. This was the source of much disappointment and remorseful feelings on the part of the children. One day half the minnows from the pail were poured into a large flat dish, that they might be better seen as they swam about; here they were forgotten for the time; on the morrow all the fish in the pail were found to be dead, but those in the flat dish were perfectly lively and well. This discovery led to a series of experiments which the author has continued at times up to the present date, and he feels no hesitancy in saying that, if the manufacturers of aquariums in this country had made it their object to build vessels in which no respectable fish could live, they could hardly have succeeded better, for they all violate this first rule the greater the surface of water exposed to the air, the greater the quantity of oxygen absorbed from the