The Romans, long before they had attained to the material wealth of the modern nations of Europe, had exhibited to the people of their capital all the noblest animals of Asia and Africa. Even the Giraffe and the Hippopotamus were familiar forms to the Roman populace; while, with the great modern nations of the west, the sight of these wonderful creatures is but quite a recent gratification. It only remained to the ancients to have exhibited a Titanic Aquarium, to render our triumph over their labours in the field of popular natural history impossible. Had but a Roman Warrington or Gosse developed the germ of such an idea, and an Osler existed to furnish the glass—the Pompey, or Cæsar, or Crassus, would not have been wanting to feast the eyes, both of patrician and plebeian Rome, with an Aquarium measuring hundreds of feet in length, in which the monsters of the deep would have been exhibited in deadly conflict, and human divers, armed with net and trident, like the retiariæ of their gladiatorial combats, would have encountered, beneath the waters, the Shark, the Whale, or the Torpedo, to the shouts of crowded circuses, the centre of which would have been a glass-walled ocean. But a gigantic Aquarium is, fortunately, a feat that yet remains for modern science to achieve, and which it will doubtless accomplish. The day will arrive when we shall see the living Behemoth—the Titan of the deep—rolling majestic in waves of his native element, perhaps pursued by his cruel enemy the Sword-Fish, or harried by a shoal of Herrings, graphically exemplifying to a London crowd the origin of Yarmouth bloaters. Or we may see the dreaded Shark float round and round the vast glass prison seeking his prey, and the Shark-hunter of the south seas may be imported to exhibit his skill in a bloodless conflict—mocking the attempts of the sea monster to seize him, as the Spanish matador plays long with the infuriated bull; but without necessitating the same catastrophe to the animal, defenceless against the specially-trained skill of his human antagonist. We have already had our crystal palaces, covering their acres, and filled with objects of art and wealth from every quarter of the globe; it is not impossible, therefore, that we may have crystal-walled seas, in which aquatic menageries will form the last new object of fashion and wonder. For the present, however, the Aquarium is, as I have said, but a toy, yet one full of pleasant instruction; and it doubtless contains the germs of a development, the precise direction of which it is at present difficult to guess. THE END. London: THOMAS HARRILD, Printer, Salisbury Square, and Silver Street. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcriber’s note: Plate caption numbering discrepancies have been retained to match the Plate. List of Plates, ‘pink’ changed to ‘Pink,’ “The Pink Ceramium 47”