CHAPTER VIII.. The House Aquarium.

THE HOUSE AQUARIUM.

Aquariums.--Travelling Botanists.--The Victoria Regia.--The House Aquarium.--Its Construction.--What causes the Corruption of Stagnant Water.--Means of avoiding it in the House Aquarium.--The Cobbler.--Interesting Habits of this Fish.--Aquatic Plants for the Aquarium.--Hydrocharis.--Pontederia.--Mimosa Pudica, or Aquatic Sensitive Plant.--Rice grafted upon Phalaris.--Manner of grafting it.--Aquatic Ranunculus.--Its Manner of Vegetation.

The Aquarium.

All of you, ladies, are acquainted with aquariums; most of you have little ones of your own, got up without expense, and I do not propose to you to attempt having them on the grand scale that Mr. Ysabeau describes. His description, however, is so interesting, that I will not omit it. He says,--speaking of large gardens,--that an aquarium is a conservatory, of a square or oval form, with a ridged roof, the interior of which encloses a basin in which ornamental aquatic plants are cultivated. You exclaim at this word, and stop me short by observing that the culture of aquatic plants is beyond the powers of the parlor gardener. If this be your opinion, ladies, permit me to say, that you are under a great mistake, and I shall endeavor to convince you of it. But let me first inform you, a little more in detail, what an aquarium is.

There exists among the learned men a class, essentially adventurous, who have a horror of the fireside, security, and repose. These are the travelling botanists; men who are always on the road, (when they happen to be in a country where there are roads,) to discover vegetable rarities and novelties. I have had occasion to call your attention to them in speaking of dwarf succulent plants of the cactus family. Among the novelties with which these indefatigable seekers have been enriching our collections for some years past, are found quite a large number of aquatic plants from the tropical regions. Among these is the great nenuphar of the River of the Amazons, the Victoria regia--true queen of the tropical waters.

So long as the number of hothouse aquatic plants was not too great, people contented themselves with lodging them in the reservoir where the water destined for watering was kept. But when the Victoria regia arrived in Europe, the leaves of which, unfolded upon the tranquil waters, measured more than a yard in diameter, the botanists perceived the propriety of lodging it and other beautiful tropical aquatic plants of large dimensions, conformably to their rank, in basins of tepid water, within hothouses, which are, at present, very numerous in Europe, and are designated under the name of aquariums.

You understand, ladies, that this preamble is not at all designed to pave the way to counselling you to convert your parlor into a basin; which, by the help of a thermo-siphon, being kept at the temperature of the waters of the River of the Amazons, you might have the satisfaction of seeing grow and bloom there the Victoria regia. I am going to propose something less impracticable.

House Aquarium.

The house which you occupy is one into which water is brought. You have a parlor on the ground floor, and a vaulted cellar under this parlor. These circumstances permit you to have a house aquarium, of which it is now my business to show you the advantages in regard to parlor horticulture.

In the middle of your parlor you must place a table, with four legs, in the form of columns, two of which legs must be hollow, and have pipes within them; one to receive the water when it comes, and the other to conduct it off. In the middle of this table, an elegant glass basin, thick enough to be strong, must be supported by four hollow columns of polished brass, similar to those which sustain the beam of a pair of scales. The pipe enclosed in one of the legs of the table must be prolonged through one of these columns, and a swan’s beak at the top of the column will pour a continued stream of water into the basin, which water will escape by an opening of a suitable diameter, contrived for the purpose, in one of the columns at the opposite side of the basin.

Fish that ought to be put in it.

Before speaking to you of the plants that the water of your aquarium can nourish, and of the culture of these plants, I will answer an objection which naturally presents itself here: the water of your basin, you will say, although renewed by a continued stream, cannot fail to be corrupted, and to fill your house with a marshy smell, which will be as disagreeable as unhealthy.

Here is another mistake; and so you will acknowledge, if you permit me to give you some words of explanation on the subject of stagnant water. When water exhales an odor of putridity, it is not the water itself that is corrupted; it is the animal matter which it holds in suspension; it is, above all, the thousands of animalcula which are born, live, multiply, and die there with a prodigious rapidity, and of which water, to all appearance most pure, contains hordes without number. But, if you place in the aquarium living fish, they will nourish themselves with these animalcula as well as with the animal and vegetable matter held in suspension in the water; and that of the aquarium will never exhale the odor of stagnant water.

If you do not like one fish better than another, and have no preference for the gold fish of China, who are in possession of the privilege of constantly peopling the basins, I would advise you, ladies, to adopt the pretty little fish named by the naturalists epinoche, and well known under its vulgar name of cobbler, because of the point, in the shape of an awl, with which its back is armed. The manners of this fish, that you can study at leisure through the transparent walls of your aquarium, are very interesting. It alone, among all the known fish, makes a nest, which it does out of the refuse parts of the aquatic plants, and in this nest the female deposits her eggs. Both male and female, after the eggs are hatched, take assiduous care of the young family.

Plants to put in the Aquarium.

Pardon an old professor of natural history, ladies, for this short excursion into the domains of ichthyology. I have wandered from parlor gardening; I hasten back as quickly as I can.

There is a crowd of charming plants among which you may choose to fill the water of your aquarium, such as the hydrocharis, pontederia, and many others. One word only upon those most worthy of attention. You are, doubtless, acquainted with the sensitive plant, or mimosa pudica, the leaflets of which withdraw and contract when they are touched. There exists an aquatic species of this, which you can have floating upon the parlor aquarium, for it is very small. Its leaflets are exactly similar to those of the terrestrial sensitive, and possess the same retractile properties.

Manner of grafting Rice.

If you put at the bottom of your aquarium a pot filled with good earth, where you have sowed some grains of rice which have not had the husk taken off, they will come up; and you can have the pleasure of grafting the plants from these seeds upon reeds. For this purpose you must cut, by a slanting cut at one of its joints, a rice straw having its ear half developed; then, in a contrary slant, cut a joint of the phalaris reed, which is to be the stock of your graft, and fit one to the other, wrapping them with a thread of very fine woollen yarn. The whole, for greater security, must be attached to a rod for a support. You will thus see the rice stalk, nourished by the phalaris, ripen its grain as well as that which is not grafted.

There is a little plant, the aquatic ranunculus, common in all our streams, which, if you follow my advice, you will admit into the society of the rarest plants. What recommends it is its peculiar mode of vegetation. After springing from the seed at the bottom of the basin, the stalk, as it progresses in its growth, puts forth, in place of leaves, elegant filaments of a fine, pale green; and this continues to be the case until it has become long enough to reach the surface of the water, and come in contact with the air. Then, as if transformed suddenly into a different plant, its whole appearance changes; no more filaments to be seen; they have become metamorphosed into leaves cut in segments, which lie floating upon the tranquil water, and amidst which rise the floral stalks, bearing little single flowers--white, with a yellow mark at the base of each petal. Common as it is, the aquatic ranunculus may, with its European physiognomy, hold its place very well in the midst of the most beautiful aquatic plants of foreign origin.

Take notice, I beg you, ladies, that I do not in any way pretend that there is no objection to a house aquarium; it costs a good deal, and causes derangements--particularly for its first establishment--which would prevent its being admitted every where; but it incontestably forms a part of parlor gardening for all such as can afford the expense, and are willing to submit to the inconveniences occasioned by it for the sake of the pleasures that it will yield in return.