At the east end of the building the alligators' pool discovers here and
there a floating reptile's head, the outline of which reminds us of the
hippopotamus. In both cases the habit of resting in the water with the
head and body almost entirely submerged necessitates a raised form of the
nostril and eyesocket, in order to allow the animal to see and breathe. A
similar formation of the face is observable in the wart hog (in another
portion of the gardens), which wallows up to its eyes in slush and mire.
The alligators have the tank to themselves, with the exception of a
couple of turtles, which are too hard nuts for even them to crack.
The council has only established the aquarium a few years, and already it
is well stocked with specimens of British zoophytes and annelides, for the
most part dredged from the neighbourhood of Weymouth. If these are so
beautiful, what must be the wonders of the deep sea in tropical climates?
Who knows what strange things a bold adventurer might pick up who, like
Schiller's diver, would penetrate the horrid depths of the whirlpool, not
for the jewelled cup of the monarch, but for the hidden living treasures
nature has planted there? Doubtless, among the rusty anchors and
weed-clung ribs of long-lost armadas, there nestle gigantic zoophytes and
enormous starfish, which would make the fortune of the Gardens in a single
season. At all events, we hope to see the aquarium greatly extended, as it
will afford the means of studying a department of natural history of which
we have hitherto been almost wholly in the dark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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