This is Mr. Gosse’s method. But Mr. Lloyd, in his “Handbook to the Crystal Palace Aquarium,” advises that no weed should be put into the tank. “It is better,” he says, “to depend only on those which gradually and naturally appear on the rocks of the aquarium by the action of light, and which answer every chemical purpose.” I should advise anyone intending to set up an aquarium, however small, to study what Mr. Lloyd says on this matter in pp. 17–19, and also in page 30, of his pamphlet; and also to go to the Crystal Palace Aquarium, and there see for himself the many beautiful species of sea-weeds which have appeared spontaneously in the tanks from unsuspected spores floating in the sea-water. On the other hand, Mr. Lloyd lays much stress on the necessity of aërating the water, by keeping it in perpetual motion; a process not easy to be carried out in small aquaria; at least to that perfection which has been attained at the Crystal Palace, where the water is kept in continual circulation by steam-power. For a jar-aquarium, it will be enough to drive fresh air through the water every day, by means of a syringe. Now for the live stock. In the crannies of every rock you will find sea-anemones (Actiniæ); and a dozen of these only will be enough to convert your little vase into the most brilliant of living flower-gardens. There they hang upon the under side of the ledges, apparently mere rounded lumps of jelly: one is of dark purple dotted with green; another of a rich chocolate; another of a delicate olive; another sienna-yellow; another all but white. Take them from their rock; you can do it easily by slipping under them your finger-nail, or the edge of a pewter spoon. Take care to tear the sucking base as little as possible (though a small rent they will darn for themselves in a few days, easily enough), and drop them into a basket of wet sea-weed; when you get home turn them into a dish full of water and leave them for the night, and go to look at them to-morrow. What a change! The dull lumps of jelly have taken root and flowered during the night, and your dish is filled from side to side with a bouquet of chrysanthemums; each has expanded into a hundred-petalled flower, crimson, pink, purple, or orange; touch one, and it shrinks together like a sensitive plant, displaying at the root of the petals a ring of brilliant turquoise beads. That is the commonest of all the Actiniæ (Mesembryanthemum); you may have him when and where you will: but if you will search those rocks somewhat closer, you will find even more gorgeous species than him. See in that pool some dozen large ones, in full bloom, and quite six inches across, some of them. If their cousins whom we found just now were like Chrysanthemums, these are like quilled Dahlias. Their arms are stouter and shorter in proportion than those of the last species, but their colour is equally brilliant. One is a brilliant blood-red; another a delicate sea-blue striped with pink; but