The Ocean at Home: An Illustrated History of the Aquarium

Bernd Brunner

The Ocean at Home An Illustrated History of the Aquarium

Princeton Architectural Press, New York

First published in English in 2005 by Princeton Architectural Press 37 East Seventh Street New York, New York 10003 For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657 Visit our website at www.papress.com First published in German in 2003 by transit Buchverlag Copyright © 2003 transit Buchverlag 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1 First edition Printed and bound in China For the present edition both text and illustrations of the original German version have been considerably expanded and adjusted. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. For Princeton Architectural Press: Project editor: Nicola Bednarek Copy editor: Scott Tennent Layout: Linda Lee, based on the design by Gudrun Fröba, transit Buchverlag Translation: Ashley Marc Slapp Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Janet Behning, Megan Carey, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Jan Haux, Clare Jacobson, Mark Lamster, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee, Katharine Myers, Molly Nash Rouzie, Lauren Nelson, Jane Sheinman, Scott Tennent, Jennifer Thompson, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brunner, Bernd, 1964– [Wie das Meer nach Hause kam. English] The ocean at home : an illustrated history of the aquarium / Bernd Brunner. p. cm. ISBN 1-56898-502-9 (alk. paper) 1. Aquariums—History. I. Title. SF457.3.B78 2005 639.34’2—dc22 2004027647

Contents

7 D ive In

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1 1 The F irst See d 9 The Secret of the Ocean 1 9The Se cond See d 1 7 Chambers, Cabinets, Cases 23 The Third See d Pet Fish

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26 “ Pa ssion a nd D iligence” Pioneers

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39 “A Strong, Intensive D esire” The Propagandist

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62From Salt to Fre shwate r Aqu ari u m The Lake in a Glass

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78 Arriving in the U nited State s 68 Aquarist Societies and Magazines 87E xotic Sp ecies and Tra nsp or t Diverging Beliefs

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99 Fashion Show 8 6 Typology of Parlor Aquariums 1 1 9 “A New Kind of Thea ter” The Large Aquariums 1 2 5The Aqu a riu m a s a D rea m

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1 33 Ap p e ndix 1 33 1 33 Acknowledgments 1 3 3 1 33 Selected Bibliography 1 35 1 33 Illustration Credits 1 3 9 133A Selection of Aquariums and Oceanariums 141 1 33 About the Author 1 43

“There are ideas that dream.” —Gaston Bachelard

D ive In The first-time visitor to an aquarium strolls around searching and contemplating; you can tell by his facial expression that he cannot contain his inner excitement. His curiosity is so great that he can hardly enjoy the moment; I am sorry, but he looks so helpless, as if he has suddenly found himself among people whose language he neither speaks nor understands.

It is almost impossible for today’s aquarium visitors to fully comprehend these words by the German doctor and natural scientist Gustav Jäger, who in 1860 built one of mainland Europe’s first public saltwater aquariums in Vienna. We should not underestimate our current knowledge of the submarine world: we have seen the movies by Jacques Cousteau and his numerous imitators, tried to find “Nemo,” visited aquariums from an early age, and might have even gone snorkeling and diving in the Caribbean or in the Red Sea. But in 1850 the picture was very different. Knowledge of the ocean was mainly from hearsay, rarely from one’s own experience. At a time when one’s image of the animal kingdom was almost entirely dominated by land animals, a unique invention known as the aquarium brought the ocean into the home. People were confronted with a strange new world filled with amazing creatures and exciting new life-forms.

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The question of whether sea anemones or corals are animals or plants must have been a popular debate amongst the curious visitors to Jäger’s aquarium, who “visibly struggled and fought with their conventional beliefs.” Observing visitors to the aquarium, Jäger noted further: Occasionally, when the guide happened to be absent, I have witnessed cases in which educated individuals, after longer periods of moving from one tank to the next, walked out and asked the ticket officer angrily: ‘What in heaven’s name am I actually supposed to see in there?’

The unknown provoked feelings of both curiosity and apprehension. While visitors were searching for a new experience, they were also afraid of what they might discover. They fought it, not willing to believe or understand what appeared before their eyes. Jäger had to use all his pedagogical skills to explain the wondrous life-forms in the tanks. His efforts ultimately paid off, and he was able to observe “how at first the visitors started to understand, and how this then gave way to amazement, finally resulting in warm admiration.” Today, it is easy to take the aquarium for granted, but one must wonder how awesome it must have been 150 years ago to peer through a window into a truly alien world. How did such an invention come to be? This fascinating idea of simulating, gazing at, and observing the exotic world of the ocean in an artificial environment did not simply develop from one day to the next, but required a very specific will to comprehend, as well as the appropriate materials and techniques. This book attempts to show and examine the evolution of the aquarium, from the different historical precursors to today’s public and private displays, and to give an insight into the mindset of the scientists, inventors, and obsessive enthusiasts who recreated the ocean in their homes.

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Th e First Se e d The Secret of the Ocean

The aquarium has a lot in common with the menagerie, the forerunner of the modern-day zoo. But in contrast to animals in a zoo, where words like “tame” and “domesticated” can often be heard, marine creatures are instinctively shy. While the keeping and displaying of animals from around the globe may fulfill a wish to capture a sense of the wild, the invention and subsequent expansion of the aquarium was born out of a desire to discover and explore the mysteries of the ocean. This interest, however, did not emerge until the eighteenth century; until then the ocean had been taboo, a place of great fear. For centuries, scientists inspired by ancient myths and sailors’ yarns had helped to stoke those fears. The ocean was considered the source of life but also a place of ill omen, death, and mayhem—a cursed, dark world where terrifying monsters lurked, devouring anything in sight. Over time, however, this bleak picture began to change. Although nineteenth-century artists still painted shipwrecks and the fear of drowning was still common, naturalists and authors showed an increasing interest in the ocean. The coast had also been embraced as a vacation destination. Reports about the healing powers of salt water and the fresh ocean

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This construction made of leather and metal is one of the first documented diving helmets, seventeeth century

breeze helped create new seaside resorts, first in Great Britain and later in continental Europe and the eastern United States. Thanks to the newly completed railroad systems, these resorts could now be reached in a matter of hours. This easier access coupled with the public’s changing perceptions played a major role in increasing the ocean’s popularity. While the coasts and surfaces of the oceans were being explored more and more, the deep sea still kept its secrets for some time. Attempts to shed light on the ocean’s murky depths failed for many years due to technical shortcomings, and research in the early nineteenth century remained focused on physical and chemical analyses, such as gauging the water’s temperature, salt content, and density, as well as attempts to understand the principles of wave formation. Around 1830 scientific interest in this area declined, and many researchers turned to other burgeoning fields such as meteorology and geomagnetism. Biologists, on the other hand, began heading out to sea more intensively to collect and study marine life. Invertebrate creatures such as sea anemones, sponges, corals, worms, jellyfish, and crabs were particularly fascinating, as these life-forms played an important role in the development of the theory of evolution. Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, the physique, shape, and appearance of many marine animals had still been an enigma. The popular assumption was that nothing could exist in the cold and dark abyss of the deep sea. In 1844 an anonymous author wrote in the book The Ocean: a Description of the Wonders and Important Products of the Sea: Heavy bodies, which will sink rapidly from the surface, do at length apparently

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A forerunner of modern diving suits at the beginning of the nineteenth century

The crew of the French corvette Alecton trying to catch a giant squid in 1861

cease to descend long before they have reached the bottom; the pressure of the water being such as to cause them to remain at certain depths, varying in proportion to their weights. Thus it is that the plumb line will not act beyond a certain length, and we have no means, of course, of extending our inquiries deeper.

The image of a current-free ocean bed led many to believe that the exchange of nutrition or release of gases was impossible. In other words, the ocean floor was thought to be a barren, lifeless place. Not everyone shared this assumption. The British botanist, zoologist, and geologist Edward Forbes wished to explore beyond the depth after which it

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Usage of a dredger

was believed life could no longer exist, and in 1841, he had the opportunity to cruise the eastern Mediterranean as the naturalist aboard the naval surveying ship hms Beacon. Forbes dredged to depths of up to 230 fathoms, or 1,380 feet. The results were rather poor, but he came up with the hypothesis of eight bands, or depth zones, in the sea, each having a unique assemblage of marine life. During the 1850s, miles and miles of underwater telegraph cables were installed, opening unprecedented lines of communication between continents. In 1860 a damaged cable, which had lain between the Italian island of Sardinia and the Algerian coast for three years, was fished out of the Mediterranean. This operation not only brought the remains of the cable to the surface, but also numerous creatures—from depths below 1,000 fathoms! Nearly twenty years after he proposed it, Edward Forbes’s theory was confirmed, and the centuries-old perception of a lifeless deep sea was permanently laid to rest. Frenzied work was promptly carried out in various countries to develop diving bells—an undertaking that confronted builders with great problems due to

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the enormous change in pressure underwater. One such example was the German submarine engineer Wilhelm Bauer. In 1866 he submitted a proposal to construct a propeller-driven submarine diving station whose functional principle was based on an air bladder, which had the ability to “dive, climb, hold out, and incline” perfectly. Sadly, his apparatus, intended to enable the inspection of telegraph cables and to serve the pearl and coral industry, was never built. In the following years, scientists ventured further out to sea and, with the help of dredgers, set sail for ever-lower depths. Initially, Great Britain, France, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries were very active in pursuing marine life, while the United States continued to focus on exploring its coasts and ascertaining the limits of its own water resources.

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Diving chamber with lighthouse by the German submarine engineer Wilhelm Bauer

The British corvette HMS Challenger

The now legendary four-year expedition of the British corvette hms Challenger, led by Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, started in 1872 and explored 363 locations around the world. The ship set out to investigate for the first time the conditions of each of the oceanic basins, and it did indeed navigate through every one except the Arctic. Its results filling thirtyeight large volumes, Thomson’s expedition laid the foundations for interdisciplinary scientific knowledge of the deep sea: its life, from the floating plankton to the creatures at its depths (Thomson introduced an astounding 4,717 new animal species to science); the motions and composition of the water from the surface to the bottom; and the shape and composition of the ocean floor. Knowledge about life in the deep sea broadened, but its interpretation was often accompanied by ambivalence. In fact, many of the deep-sea creatures Thomson recorded seemed to confirm the fears of earlier times, as they often resembled the monsters that had long populated sailors’ tales. The writer of biological science, William Marshall, for instance, wrote in 1888, about the “real pelican eel”: This strange monster whose shape combines a spoon and a funnel can do little more than to wriggle along the ocean bed; it hides in the mud with only its open, nearly toothless mouth protruding, patiently waiting until a victim escaping from the Scylla of a malicious lurking crustacean comes too close to the Charybdis of this terrible gullet and falls victim to it.

Gustav Jäger seemed torn between two minds when noting in the chapter about the “abysses of the ocean”

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The real pelican eel, a creature from the deep sea

of his book Das Leben im Wasser und im Aquarium (Life in the Water and in the Aquarium) that the creatures caught during deep-sea fishing were not fantastical dragons, octopuses, or sea snakes, but small and harmless life-forms that preyed on even smaller creatures which were only visible under a microscope. Yet, he went on to add the following reservation: It is still possible that in the end the prophecies of the myths will come true and gigantic animals will appear from the depths, [because] the more thorough our deep-sea research methods become, the more creatures will appear.

The demystification of the deep sea was certainly received with mixed feelings. In 1893 the foreword of Johannes Walther’s book Allgemeine Meereskunde (General Marine Science) asked whether the new inventions making possible the scientific examination of the ocean would not destroy its beauty, just as the invention of the telescope had “torn the soul out of the sky.” Fifteen years earlier, the French author Léon Sonrel had become obsessed with the ocean. His book Le Fond de la Mer (The Ocean Bed) was a compendium of every imaginable aspect of the submarine world and culminated in a fantasy in which Paris is completely submerged. The idea of oceanic construction played on the minds of many nonfiction authors and novelists in the 1860s: La Mer (The Ocean) by Jules Michelet, Les Travailleurs de la Mer (The Workers of the Ocean) by Victor Hugo, and the fantastic novel Vingt Mille Lieues sous les Mers (20,000 Leagues under the Sea) by Jules Verne are probably the most famous of these. The ocean began to play a larger role in the popular consciousness, and people became convinced that marine exploration was of great importance—both financially and intellectually—thus enabling scientists to receive support for their costly expeditions. The former fear of the ocean as a treacherous, cursed,

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lonely place had been replaced by unbridled enthusiasm. “The land of promise for the naturalist...was the bottom of the deep-sea,” wrote Sir Thomson in his book The Depths of the Sea. Seven years earlier, the German biologist Matthias Jacob Schleiden had also stated that the ocean was “no longer a barren cold place where once in a while a lonely Leviathan would pass through, [and] only an ignoramus would still consider it a place of fear.”

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Th e Se co n d Se e d Chambers, Cabinets, Cases

During the Renaissance period, cabinets of wonders—carefully selected and arranged display cases— elevated curiosities such as embalmed crocodiles, fossilized eggs, plants, and numerous other interesting objects to highly coveted symbols of a privileged audience. Since the fourteenth century, expeditions to uncharted parts of the world yielded odd marine objects such as mussels, dried starfish, or sea horses, and their mysterious meanings occupied the minds of scientists and collectors alike. The objects were placed in these cabinets or cases in order to be conserved, registered, classified, and remembered. The coral cabinet of the Dutch merchant Levinus Vincent, presented in his 1706 book Wondertooneel der Nature (Wonder Theater of Nature), was a very fine example of a collection of maritime objects. As noted by the science historian Anke te Heesen in her book The World in a Box, an attempt was made in the eighteenth century to compress the whole order of the world onto 468 cardboard cards with copper engravings, stored in a sixteen-by-twelve-inch case—essentially, the ultimate cabinet of curiosities. The case was nobly envisioned as an illustrated encyclopedia aimed at educating children and juveniles, but this gargantuan task to present the macrocosm

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Levinus Vincent’s coral cabinet

in a small concise form was soon abandoned. While the cabinet proved ineffective in this endeavor, its use was eventually envisioned anew—this time, filled with water. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, more and more people became passionate collectors of things: the simple pleasure found in the act of collecting something, anything, seemed to be satisfying enough. One spent time rejoicing at all the different colors and shapes, whatever the given object of desire. Though far from scientific analyses, the new obsessions sparked by the act of collecting did encourage many laymen’s thirst for further knowledge. One fad followed another. “Conchyliomanie,” an almost fanatic enthusiasm for collecting common seashells, was an early fad. In 1720 six Dutch

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shell collectors started meeting once a month to discuss their hobby. They called themselves “Lovers of Neptune’s Cabinet” and, according to Henry E. Coomans, their small group was the first conchological society. Around 1750 the keeping of parrots, canaries, and ornamental poultry became very popular, particularly among women. The science historian Emma C. Spary has attempted to explain this by drawing parallels between caged birds and the restricted lives of women bound to their household chores; women and aristocrats were considered to be “fickle with an uncontrollable sexual drive, dressed up in bright colors and always in pursuit of something new.” A few years later, enthusiasm in Great Britain took hold for a certain, so-called “tasteful” plant collected along The passion of collecting depicted on playing cards

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beaches: seaweed. The feather-like plant was washed in fresh water and then, while still moist, stored in little boxes. This simple hobby was just the thing for high-society ladies, who often held the responsibility of naming the newly discovered species. Collecting offered an uncontroversial distraction, and the “hunt” for objects such as shells and seaweed involved no cruelty. Above all, the collected objects were so beautifully clean and immaculate—a perfect decoration for the boudoir. Some even arranged corals and seaweed as miniature landscapes on paper. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, another kind of plant, the fern, became a new collector’s favorite in Britain. Exotic new species of ferns, imported from tropical regions, caused the plant to become a highly coveted status symbol. An increasing number of ferns were brought in, transported in more or less airtight glass tanks, which were decisive for the survival of the plants during long journeys. That plant life could now sustain such journeys was a tremendous breakthrough. And since scores of collectors were already fascinated by unused treasures imported from the seaside, it was only a matter of time before such tanks would transport not plants, but animals from the deep.

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Th e Th ird Se e d Pet Fish

Attempts at observing fish in water-filled containers close to home have a long history, stretching as far back as several centuries before the birth of Christ, when the people of Lykia, a region in the southwest of modern-day Turkey, played flutes to lure Holy Fish to the surface in order to “question” them about the future. Seers observed the fish chasing each other, disappearing, and suddenly reappearing, and from this, like the bird interpreters of other cultures, drew their conclusions. Otto Keller noted in Die Antike Tierwelt (The Ancient World of Animals) that Pliny the Elder wrote of people who kept oracular fish, whose acceptance or rejection of food translated to a good or ill omen. A marvelous fish pond linked to rivers and streams is believed to have existed in the ancient Greek colony of Agrigent in Sicily around 500 bc. Centuries later, during the Roman Empire, almost all of the coastal villas possessed saltwater ponds. The Roman poet Rutilius Namatianus gave an account of the fish ponds belonging to a Jew on the Etrurian coast: “They were located on a grove, where the fish were able to play merrily within the vivariums in the calm waves of the enclosed surf.” These fish were kept in opaque tanks, often made of marble, in front of the house. The first fish to enter the

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Geisha with goldfish bowl, Japanese woodcut print by Keisai Eisen (1790–1848), ca. 1830

interior of a house in imperial Rome was the sea barbel, a much cherished and expensive breed. Allegedly, they were kept in small tanks underneath the cushions of the guest beds. Around 50 ad, panes of glass were brought to Rome, Herculanaeum, and Pompeii, to replace one wall of the marble tanks; now it was possible to actually see the hustle and bustle of the fish without having to guess their schematic movements from above. By the tenth century ad, goldfish were already playing a significant role as pets in China and later became very popular with the country’s ruling classes. Emperor Hung Wu established a porcelain factory in 1369 that produced large tubs, decorated with images of dragons and clouds, for fish and aquatic plants. The shape of these tubs changed over the years, first as half-barrels, then, from 1700 onward, as hemispherical shapes with rounded sides at the top. Over time, the containers started to look more and more like modernday fish bowls. Around 1500, the goldfish was exported to the Japanese city of Sakai, near Osaka. But it was not for another two hundred years that Japan had its first professional goldfish breeder: Sato Sanzaemon, from the Koriyama area. From here, the goldfish culture spread to all four corners of the country. Woodcut prints from the early 1800s show elegant courtesans gazing at miniature globes, giving the impression that the keeping of fish was one of their favorite pastimes. Today, Japan is famously known for its multitude of goldfish, bred and differentiated into highly

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Dorade de la Chine

complicated genealogical trees, including species with colorful scales and wildly shaped fins. The first goldfish is presumed to have appeared in Europe around 1611, most likely in Portugal. The first sighting in Great Britain was in 1691. Even as late as 1750, the present of a Dorade de la Chine, given to the Marquise de Pompadour by the French East India Company, still caused a great sensation. It was a very suitable gift, as the Pompadour was a Pisces. The goldfish became as popular in Europe as the canary, which had succeeded in spreading throughout the “whole educated world,” as Ernst Bade wrote in 1894. The goldfish was especially popular in Europe’s warmer regions: the climates of Italy and the south of France brought out the fish’s red-gold much sooner than in Germany, where breeders had to wait an additional year before the fish aged naturally into the desired coloration, as Franz Kuhn explained in Der kleine Goldfischteich (The Small Goldfish Pond).

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By 1770, the keeping of goldfish had become quite common. In contrast, the goldfish did not reach the United States until much later, probably around 1850. The well-known showman Phineas T. Barnum is said to have brought some examples back from his travels to Europe in the mid-1800s, and G. F. Hervey noted in his book The Goldfish that a New York City pet shop was selling goldfish around 1865. In 1883 the aquarist Hugo Mulertt, an American of German origin, complimented Admiral Dan Ammen on his efforts to cultivate the goldfish in the United States—methods that Mulertt would soon use in his goldfish hatchery in Cincinnati. With his participation in industrial expositions, his ways of breeding goldfish became better known and helped to spread the hobby in the United States as the nineteenth century pressed on.

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“ Pa ssio n a n d D ilig e n ce” Pioneers

Even before the arrival of the goldfish in Europe, historical documents show that there had been attempts to keep other sorts of fish in glass containers. Around 1572 the German astrologer, alchemist, and doctor Leonhard Thurneysser zum Thurn is said to have manufactured an odd glass sphere in the core of which sat a bird while fish swam happily around the perimeter. A century later, in 1666, Leonhard Baldner wrote his famous Vogel-, Fisch- und Tierbuch (Bird, Fish, and Animal Book). A diligent passion for fishing and shooting encouraged Baldner to become a scientist, and he commissioned an artist to paint illustrations of all the common marine animals. In order to observe weather loaches and newts for a longer period of time, Baldner decided to put them in large tanks filled with water and sand. The question of whether these animals could really be kept far away from the sea, river, or ocean for an extended period of time remained unanswered, however. In spite of the popularity and proliferation of pet fish over the centuries and around the world, it was still nearly impossible to keep a fish alive for very long outside its natural habitat. In 1721 the Englishman Richard Bradley believed that a lack of water movement was the reason that animals could not survive

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Catching turtles, around 1850

in tanks. He suggested designing and creating small ponds that would be fed by tidal water, which would then be kept in motion via two water wheels. Bradley also came up with the idea of building a small dam to section off part of a stream and to salt the water therein. Apparently, he had heard about an ocean turtle that had survived for a long time in this manner. There is also evidence that in 1790 the Scottish biologist Sir John Dalyell started keeping marine animals for observation purposes. Among these creatures was an anemone (Actinia equina) that he had brought back from North Berwick in 1827. He exchanged the water on a daily basis and occasionally fed the creature with small pieces of mussels and

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oysters. If we can believe what the Scottish zoologist D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson wrote in Science and the Classics, this anemone even outlived Sir Dalyell by several decades, finally dying in 1887—a full sixty years after its capture. In 1797 a 300-page book entitled Naturgeschichte der Stubenthiere (Natural History of Parlor Animals), written by the zoologist and scientist Johann Matthäus Bechstein and illustrated with a pipe-smoking ape, was published in Gotha, Germany. Besides mammals Naturgeschichte der Stubenthiere (Natural History of Parlor Animals), title page

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and insects, the book also included a small chapter on the knowledge and keeping of fish. Specifically the chapter dealt with the weather loach and the “gold carp,” a goldfish that was “partly kept in garden ponds and basins, and partly in glass or porcelain tanks... as a feast for the eyes.” In order to study their movements Bechstein suggested using “big glass bowls with an opening at the top which is wide enough for the fish to receive oxygen, but narrow enough to stop them from jumping out,” and further advised that during the summer the water should be exchanged twice a week, and during the winter every eight to fourteen days. According to Bechstein, fish had a very good sense of hearing and in China every fish bowl was equipped with a small whistle with which the fish could be lured to the surface for feeding. The scientist regarded the weather loach to be just as talented, and even stated that it could make sounds. It seemed to behave like a living barometer, becoming uneasy when rain or thunder were imminent, swimming to the surface even though it normally liked to keep to the bottom. Provided the weather loach received fresh water and mud at the prescribed intervals, it would be able to survive for many years in a large sugar jar filled to approximately one-third with mud and sand. During the winter it required a heated room and a place close to a window. Inspired by the work of Sir Dalyell, the French scientist Jeannette Power de Villepreux belonged to a group of scientists that displayed a more explicit connection to later saltwater aquariums. Around 1830, Power carried out research in Messina, Sicily, on argonauts, also known as paper nautilus—profoundly odd creatures possessing a lensless eye that functions like a pinhole camera. The timid females of the species (the males are much smaller in size) would swim in the ocean either alone

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Cage á la Power

Paper nautilus

or, as Matthias Jacob Schleiden wrote, “united as a small group of dames,” but would always retreat into their shells at the slightest approach of something unknown or an intense movement of the waves, before sinking again deep down into the secure depths of Neptune’s empire. Power had special wooden boxes constructed in which she kept the animals brought to her by fishermen or which she had caught herself. These boxes—which came to be known as Cages à la Power—were lowered into the sea and anchored. Applying a specially constructed mechanism, she hauled the boxes and glass containers from the water, making observation easier. Power had set up a laboratory in a house directly by the sea, which contained a wooden box into which salt water was pumped in and out via rubber hoses—a small but very efficient circulation system. Richard Owen, director of the British Museum in London and also known for coining the term “dinosaur”

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Wardian case

for prehistoric reptiles, knew of Power’s experiments, and in 1858 he attributed the invention of the aquarium to her. Power herself would later express—quite selfconfidently—that she had in fact invented the aquarium. Until the end of the nineteenth century, American feminists viewed Power not only as the inventor of the aquarium but also as the prime example in a long line of successful female inventors. An article in The North American Review from 1883 entitled “Woman as an Inventor” highlighted Power as “one of the most eminent naturalists of the century.” A longbelated—and exceptionally remote—memorial was granted to her in 1991, when a crater on Venus was named after her. Power’s claim, however, provoked objections. As early as 1858, another article, also in the The North American Review, asserted that Power’s cages “were merely receptacles suspended in the waters of the bay to enable her to watch the habits of marine animals” and that “the plan of maintaining the balance of nature by means of plants was unknown to her.” Until this point in time, it was still not clear how, on a large scale, a self-contained water eco-system could function, at least over a length of time. The surgeon Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward had already discovered in the early 1830s that delicate plants such as ferns could flourish in nearly airtight glass tanks. The microclimate, which stabilized itself inside the tank, allowed the plants to be more or less oblivious to external temperature changes and pollutants. The latter was an important factor for Ward, who lived in the middle of London’s docklands. Additionally, hardly any new water was required as the evaporating water condensed on the glass and was reabsorbed by the plants. These small

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Another illustration of the Alecton trying to catch an approximately 4,000-pound squid—120 miles northeast of Tenerife. After a three-hour hunt, a rope was thrown around the squid. The rope caught on the large rear fins and with one swift movement cut through the soft body. The squid submerged and vanished.

Plants of the submarine world

Opposite page: Submarine landscape

Following page: Parasitic anemone (Calliactis parasitica)

hothouses were soon being mass-produced and used as “miniature gardens” in places where the view out of one’s window was less than appealing, or by breeders who could not afford their own hothouses. In 1836 Ward suggested using the principle of his tanks for tropical animals, and in 1841 he filled one with aquatic plants and toy fish, et voila: it flourished without constantly requiring new water. Concurrent with Ward, others in Europe were creating similar contraptions: around 1838 the French zoologist Felix Dujardin was also said to have owned a saltwater aquarium, though he did not actually use this term; and in his book A History of British Sponges and Lithophytes, published in 1842, a certain Dr. Johnstone mentioned glasses in which he had kept small corals, a starfish, and mussels for two months. In 1846 the marine zoologist Anna Thynne, wife of the Reverend Lord John Thynne, sub-dean of Westminster Abbey, transported some stone corals from Torquay on the south coast of England to her London home in a clay container filled with salt water. She subsequently placed the animals in two glass bowls in order to analyze them in greater detail. At first she exchanged the water in the bowls every second day, but soon her reserve of salt water was gone. Thynne decided to reuse the old water after moving it back and forth in a receptacle for forty-five minutes in front of an open window (a rather monotonous chore likely left to her housemaid). This “new,” enriched water now supplied the corals with sufficient oxygen again. When Thynne returned from one of her journeys, her house was a place of uproar and confusion: the asexual and fissiparous animals had, as is their nature, reproduced, throwing the servants into a state of panic. They had tried to stop the animals from reproducing by placing several stones in the bowl, but their efforts were in vain. A few years later, in 1849, Thynne also added seaweed and was thus able to maintain

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Corals

her collection of marine life at her London home for almost three years, a feat that garnered the attention of many biologists and other people interested in natural history. Rebecca Stott, who dealt extensively with Thynne’s study of madreporas in her book Theatres of Glass, described Thynne as the creator of the “first balanced marine aquarium in London.” But others were credited for the detailed scientific documentation and further publicizing of these findings. Among them was Robert Warington, a member of the Chemical Society in London, who systematically studied the interaction between underwater animal and plant organisms and who had possibly heard about Thynne’s experiments. In May 1849 (at about the same time as Thynne), after isolated tests with plants in Wardian cases, Warington experimented with a thirteen-gallon container, which he filled with spring water, mud, several stones, two goldfish, a plant called “eelgrass,” and a few pond or great pond snails as “renovators.” Warington published his findings about the selfsufficiency of this biotope in 1850 in a short article in the Chemical Society’s journal, describing the combination of previous separate findings: animals

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inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide while plants do the opposite, absorbing carbon dioxide and, under the influence of light, releasing oxygen—the principle of photosynthesis; as fish eat insects and small snails, they excrete substances that are also beneficial to plants; additionally, small water snails eat the parasitic algae that develop in tanks. Warington’s experiment yielded a perfect equilibrium, an aquatic perpetuum mobile! Industrially manufactured glass, an important precondition for the further distribution of transparent tanks, was now easy to obtain and, after the repealing of the glass tax in Great Britain in 1845, also less expensive. At the first World’s Fair in London in 1851, the Crystal Palace, 1,848 by 454 feet, was the epitome of industrialized glass-and-steel production. It took two thousand workers seven months to construct using pre-manufactured and standardized components.

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“A St ro n g , In t e n sive D e sire” The Propagandist

The popularization of observing the interaction between marine animals and aquatic plants in glass tanks can be attributed to the Englishman Philip Henry Gosse, who was the first person to resolutely use the word “aquarium” for such objects. In his book A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast, published in 1853, the term “vivarium” was used interchangeably with “marine aquarium,” but one year later the die was cast for the latter variant in his book The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. As Gosse stated there, the word should be “neat, easily pronounced and easily remembered.” The term “vivarium” was designated for tanks containing mainly snakes and amphibians; “aqua vivarium” was a step in the right direction, but the term was not yet perfect. Gosse understood “aquarium” as the neutral form of “aquarius.” He must also have known that to the old Romans, an aquarium signified only a reservoir of water and also that botanists had already been using this term for plant tanks for quite some time. For him this was not contradictory but a justifiable linguistic expansion. He affirmed ceremoniously: Let the word aquarium then be the one selected to indicate these interesting collections of aquatic animals

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and plants, distinguishing it as Freshwater Aquarium, if the contents be fluviatile, or a Marine Aquarium, if [the contents are saltwater-based].

Gosse was born in 1810 in Poole, in the south of England, the son of an impoverished traveling miniature-painter. As a young man Gosse made his way across the Atlantic to Newfoundland, where he dealt with seal and cod fleets in Carbonear harbor. In his early twenties he bought a copy of the book Essays on the Microscope at an auction and devoted himself whole-heartedly to collecting insects; for two years he documented every insect he could get hold of. Along with some of his friends, he decided to move to mainland Canada in hopes of establishing a rural commune and opening a museum of stuffed birds. After both ventures failed, Gosse returned to England, where he found work as a teacher in Hackney until he received an invitation from the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge to write An Introduction to Zoology. In researching his subject, Gosse met several other naturalists and began to write articles for scientific journals. This inspired him to write a book on the findings of the explorer Sir James Clark Ross, who since 1818 had traveled throughout the Pacific and Arctic discovering a wide variety of marine flora and fauna. In 1844 The Ocean became an unexpected success for its publisher and was reprinted numerous times over the next forty years. Gosse’s newfound notoriety led to future opportunities to study the ocean world, and he left his past dalliances with entomology and zoology behind. In the fall of 1844 he went to Jamaica—a trip made possible by an avid seashell collector, who financed Gosse’s journey in return for additions to his collection. Gosse’s time in Jamaica resulted in three very successful books, and the author became an important voice among the publishing naturalists of the period. Writing became the autodidact’s livelihood.

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Upon his return from Jamaica, Gosse became a devout Christian. Through his wife, Emily Bowes, he became involved with a sect called the Plymouth Brethren Movement. Life was then dictated by the monotony of seemingly endless prayers; reading novels and poems as well as going to the theater or singing temporal songs was forbidden, and even social contacts outside the brotherhood were not permitted. Gosse strongly believed that Jesus Christ would return to Earth before his own death. Under this sense of urgency, he set about to work on several book projects, all of which dealt with life on the coast. Gosse could either be found sitting behind his desk or working outside where, dressed in his black suit, he fervently poked around in the silt of the tidal shallows or—even during heavy surf—meticulously examined the water holes in rocks for any living creature. Gosse became an authority for everything connected to coastal fauna. His frequent speeches in London were always met with acclaim and adoration. In his book The Aquarium, Gosse described his observations of coastal life and gave his readers some instructions on how to build a miniature ocean. A saltwater aquarium, he asserted, was the perfect way to get acquainted with the peculiar creatures of the ocean An excursion along the English coast

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without having to descend into the depths using com- Philip Henry plicated diving equipment. He expressed amusement Gosse on a rocky beach about a French zoologist, Henri Milne-Edwards, who stalked around at the bottom of the Mediterranean wearing a waterproof suit, special glasses, and an air pipe in order to take a closer look at the submarine world. All this was so much easier to achieve, Gosse proclaimed, in the safe environment of one’s own four walls! In his many long-winded “Let us visit the caves of a miniature ocean, reports about his coastal The gorgeous sea-flowers and worms to behold— Actinia, rose-finger’d, ever in motion; excursions Gosse told his Phyllodoce, liveried in emerald and gold.” readers that the aquarium —The Aquarium was the objective, but that many obstacles still had to be overcome. One’s relation with nature required a cautious and respectful approach, for its exploration was, in Gosse’s mind, a spiritual exercise. For Gosse, religion and natural science went hand in hand: “it brings us, in some sense, into the presence of God,” he said. “Or rather it gives us cognizance of Him, and reveals to us some of his essential attributes.” Nowadays, we might associate colorful fish or fanand feather-like algae with the aquarium. But Gosse’s

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pioneer aquarium contained an amazing bundle of marine fauna and flora. Prior to collecting the animals, it was important to collect the plants, which were responsible for the oxygen in the tank. For this, Gosse recommended the day after a full moon or new moon, as the tide is then as far out as possible and areas usually covered with water become visible. Armed with a covered collecting basket, stone and glass jars, two or three smaller vials, and some hammers and chisels, he ventured out to the ledges of rock at the edge of the sea. He was especially drawn to rough and sharp crevices—those that any intelligent hiker would try to avoid at all costs—because it was here that the desired plants tried to hide: We lift up the hanging mass of olive weed (Fucus) from the edge, and find the sides of the clefts often fringed with the most delicate and lovely forms of sea-weed; such for example, as the winged Delesseria, (D. alata) which grows in thin, much-cut leaves of the richest crimson hue, and the feathery Ptilota (P. plumosa) of a duller red.

The plant had to be removed together with a piece of the rock on which it grew; only this way did it have a chance of survival. After skillful chiseling (often under water), each piece of grass found its temporary home in a receptacle that had been brought along. It was even more important to have a suitable transport container handy when collecting animals. According to Gosse, a collector should always be watchful and alert, as strange creatures of various forms and shapes could appear at any moment. Upon returning from his seaside excursion, Gosse would begin the process of transferring his findings from the temporary tanks into his marine aquarium. The exterior of Gosse’s aquarium already resembled the familiar rectangular glass tank with birchwood beading. It was two feet long, one foot wide, one foot deep, with the sides and ends consisting of glass

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The Aquarium, published by Philip Henry Gosse: The Ancient Wrasse, title page

panes and the bottom of slate. The panes of glass were puttied between the birchwood, which was a tremendous improvement over earlier prototypical aquariums, as the even glass surfaces did not cause the optical distortions related to round glass when observing the tank’s contents. Gosse covered the bottom of the aquarium with an insulating layer of clay, pebbles, sand, and, finally, with small pieces of rock, which formed mini-bridges and overhangs that gave the swimming creatures shelter. After adding the plants, Gosse poured twenty gallons of salt water over the miniature landscape. During the first night, Gosse would observe the tank by candlelight and see that numerous tiny shells and micro-organisms were already bustling around inside. The real animals were added the following day. Among the specimens from Gosse’s excursion: one fifteen-spined stickleback, seven grey mullet, one black goby, three common periwinkle, one anomia, two common cockles, two ascidia, two hermit crabs, four sand shrimp, one prawn, three crown worms, two thick-horned anemone, and many others. All in all about one hundred animals found a new home in the tank. Although the tank could handle even more, and two or three gallons of salt water per day were constantly dripping into the aquarium from another vessel suspended over the tank as “artificial aeration,”

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it dawned on Gosse that the consumption of oxygen would soon exceed its supply. The first week of his experiment proved to be successful (apart from one or two attacks on weaker animals by predatory species). But three days into the second week a number of animals died, and the water developed an unpleasant smell due to those that had died in the sanctuary of the stones. After thoroughly cleaning the tank, Gosse carried on with his experiment with the remaining fauna and flora. Since there was as yet little possibility for the general populace to experience many of the creatures Gosse and others had collected, it fell to Gosse to bring them to life on the pages of his books. In his descriptions he concentrated on those animals that best embodied the mystery of the submarine world. He repeatedly used analogies to land animals—combining human and animal forms to create clear pictures in the readers’ minds. Gosse referred to one creature, with its long silky hair adorning it like a fur coat, as the “sea mouse,” which he called “the most gorgeously clad of all the creatures that inhabit the deep.” Carl Linnaeus, the great taxonomist of biology, who established a new system for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms, had referred to it as “Aphrodite” as early as the eighteenth century. According to Gosse, the “Aphrodite aculata, reflecting the sun-beams from the depths of the sea, exhibits as vivid colours as the peacock itself, spreading its jewelled train.” In the aquarium the sea mouse attracts attention due to its restless movements and a jet of water, which spurts every twenty-five seconds. The splendor of its changing colors made it an object of admiration: red and orange reflections usually appeared under candlelight, while during the day they changed to green and blue. Gosse also adored prawns, which he considered “particularly pleasing inhabitants of the aquarium”:

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Aesop shrimp

There is a certain lightness in the slender filiform appendages of the head, which are continually thrown into the most graceful curves, that resembles in character “the light tracery of ropes and spars” so much admired in a trimly rigged ship.

Elsewhere, Gosse continued: Their bodies are so pellucid that a lady who was this moment looking at the tank compared them to ghosts, and their smooth gliding movements aid the similitude.

The submarine world is a place where definitions are loose and guidelines become hazy. As the alter ego of this world, the aquarium emulates this laxity. Coral,

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Sea crab and small shrimp

starfish, anemone, jellyfish, sea horse: mineral/dead, fauna/flora, male/female? These unanswered questions and blurred concepts become a bundle of mysterious categories and metamorphoses that take place according to still unknown laws. With immense fascination Gosse turned toward those creatures that build some sort of relationship but can hardly be differentiated as individuals. The alliance between whelks, hermit-crabs, and sea anemones is, in Gosse’s view, simply brilliant: Many persons who know a Whelk as well as possible, hesitate when they see the familiar shell tenanted, not by the great black-spotted Mollusk, but by a mongrel between Crab and Lobster, with stout, red, pinching claws, and long, jointed, and pointed legs. And still more mysterious does the thing look, when two thirds of the shell itself is enclosed in a thick mass of purple-spotted flesh, through the midst of which the busy Crab his poking his head and limbs. In truth it is a strange affair, this threefold alliance of Whelk, Hermit-crab, and Cloak-anemone.

Hermit crab in a Cerite shell and a seahorse­

In fact it is only a relationship between two living creatures, because only the whelk’s shell remains, no longer inhabited by the original mollusks. Gosse defined the crab as “the scavenger of the sea,” which, like wolves and hyenas, devoured everything alive or dead. Also known as animal flowers, polyps, or by its scientific term “Actinia,” the sea anemone, with its color-changing tentacles, can often be found sitting on stones on the ocean bed, expanding to great lengths before shrinking to a tenth of its size. Equally fascinating, pieces of the creature could break away and develop into new animals. Due to its flower-like appearance, the sea anemone was for a long time mistakenly considered to be the “missing link” between plants and animals. The symbiosis of hermit-crab and sea anemone is—according to Gosse—open for all

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The symbiosis of hermit crab and sea anemone

possible speculation and interpretation: Who is actually in control? Is it the crab, pulling the anemone along the ocean bed, striking it with scattered stones? Or has the sea anemone devoured the shell together with the crab; and has the crab then managed to find a way out through the stomach and skin of the sea anemone? Has the sea anemone released a special membrane, enabling the crab to have a home suitable to its needs, but one it will never be able to leave? What makes the sea anemone search for snail shells and such close contact to crabs? Why does the sea anemone die and turn into a foul-smelling mass as soon as the crab leaves the shell or dies? With the help of the aquarium, Gosse hoped to discover the principle of their opposite attraction and the secret of the apparent melding of bodies and identities. Observation through the aquarium glass led to questions of the unsolved relationship between the “female” sea anemone and “male” crab; the animals fought and displayed a grotesque, suspicious analogy to the relationship between man and woman. Not until the 1920s and 1930s were biologists able to offer plausible explanations for this interaction, which is now regarded as the prime example of

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biological symbiosis. As we know today, sea anemones use their nematocysts to keep octopuses away from the crab. The sea anemone, on the other hand, profits from this, gaining a much bigger habitat due to its host’s movements. Additionally, it can ingest some of the crab’s prey as its mouth directly faces the masticatory organs of the crab. This relationship can, however, end in tragedy: if the hermit-crab cannot find enough food, it will eat the sea anemone. Although the mystery of this relationship has been solved, scientists still have much to study in the sea anemones, such as the question of its age. Unfortunately, Gosse’s The Aquarium does not give detailed information on the actual maintaining of a working saltwater aquarium. Some passages of the expansive tome contain a few hidden tips, but it is not until the final pages that Gosse provides the reader with information about cleaning the tank and supplying oxygen through the exchange of water. These pages also mention the unavoidable: the “occasional death,” which every aquarium owner will have to face sooner or later: It will still be needful to exercise a watchful supervision of the collection. It must be remembered that both the animals and plants are not in their natural circumstances, and that a certain amount of violence is done to their habits. Death, which spares them not at the bottom of the sea, will visit them in the Aquarium; and hence the vessel should be occasionally looked over, searched, as it were, to see if there be any of the specimens dead.

Gosse’s book is a bizarre description of a trip to the sea as well as a small “bible” for the coastal world. He wanted to register everything in this world, but that was not all: he wanted to take hold of it, domesticate it and—against all odds—educate it to be a permanent guest in people’s homes. His aquarium was a

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living museum, an inversion of Noah’s Ark—all species of marine fauna and flora, safely held amidst a dry environment. He stubbornly denied the transitory character of the aquarium; museums, collections, and the endless, often compulsive classification of natural species remained his central points of study, resulting in extreme laboratory experiments on these forms. Gosse tried to achieve the impossible—to put life into the “collecting cases” that had been designed centuries earlier for lifeless objects. The aquarium comprised things that—at least under the conditions of Gosse’s day—did not really belong together. At the time, the prospect of experiencing vivid nature created great excitement; the transition from the static goldfish bowl to colorful collections of enigmatic aquatic animals and plants in an aquarium was a natural extension of the trend. Comparable to the zoological gardens that brought the animal kingdom to the cities or the botanical garden hothouses that showcased tropical flora— living compendiums through which nature lovers and flâneurs alike could wander—the aquarium encapsulated the submarine world into a “see-through” form—the paradox of an ocean journey within one’s

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Sea anemones

own home. The aquarium acts as a mediator between animal and observer. Gosse had a way of expressing his enthusiasm in his books and articles that positively stirred the bourgeoisie. His numerous lectures on oceanic subjects always caused a sensation. According to the Victorian magazine, the Literary Gazette, published in London, Gosse had “dived into all those decorated palaces which had unassertively been kept under lock and key by old Neptune for such a long time”; another chronicler wrote that “all the world wanted to possess an aquarium to verify his assertions and repeat his experiments”; the magazine Blackwoods even recommended that children should not see the book, otherwise there would be no peace and quiet in the house until the children were finally allowed to have an aquarium. But the burgeoning fad needed more than Gosse’s contagious enthusiasm to be a success: it also had to please the eye. High-quality illustrations, which were quite rare at the time, therefore played an important role in the book’s success. The colorfulness of sea creatures was still largely unknown, but Gosse was not unacquainted with the drawing and printing techniques of the period. Thanks to the skills of his father, Gosse was able to produce the illustrations for the book himself. The Aquarium was more than a cultural sensation: it was also a financial success, with earnings of about 805 pounds (roughly 60,000 U.S. dollars today). A year later, the smaller Handbook to the Marine Aquarium was published for those who had not been able to afford the first book. The collecting of ferns was no longer satisfactory for the Victorian bourgeoisie. They now turned their attention toward the exploitation of the coastal regions and the question of how to transport the animals acquired on such expeditions. Women from the era in particular, known for their glowing enthusiasm

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Ocean crabs

Previous page: Plumose anemone

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Ocean annelids

Following page: Dragonet fish, monkfish and seaweed (underwater along the Heligoland coastline)

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Victorian ladies observing an aquarium, around 1860

for nature, dedicated themselves to the coasts. They swarmed onto the beaches to collect marine animals while their husbands watched from a safe distance. Here, the rapidly expanding middle class found a topic suitable for conversation as well as education. As Henry D. Butler retrospectively wrote about the British aquarium mania in his book The Family Aquarium—“The aquarium was on everybody’s lip. The aquarium rang in everybody’s ear. Morning, noon, and night, it was nothing but the aquarium.” A few years later William Alford Lloyd’s shop on Portland Road in London, quite close to Regent’s Park, experienced a boom. Fifty large tanks and countless smaller containers held some 15,000 marine specimens. The

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Lloyd’s aquarium warehouse

emporium sold salt water over the counter by the pint, quart, or gallon. Aquariums were manufactured in a nearby factory, and Lloyd employed more than a dozen people for the purpose of collecting plants and animals from the coasts and purchasing lots from amateur collectors. Lloyd’s 125-page catalog, published in 1858, listed everything to do with the aquarium. Enthusiasts could find all they required to satisfy their “strong and intensive desire” for natural objects. Before the shop opened, people “It is at once an ornament, a toy, had to make excursions out to the coast, a cabinet, a menagerie, a Jardin des plantes, a Botanico-Zoological and transportation was often expensive picture, in which every colour has and dangerous, which made the whole ­life; in short ‘a thing of beauty and undertaking quite unappealing. Once joy forever.’” Lloyd went into business, aquarium lov—Shirley Hibberd (1856) ers could obtain everything they needed easily and frequently. Only a specialist dealer, according to Lloyd, was really able to select the right animals and provide the appropriate cleaning methods. Furthermore, he also supplied what was required to adequately house the animals on offer. In contrast to the keeping of domestic animals, there was still a lot to be learned, so Lloyd also offered a customer service: aquarium maintenance and the replacement of occasional losses, though “risks, whether during transit or for any other reason, were always borne by the customer.” In order to reduce losses or damages,

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A collecting expedition along the coast

certain measures had to be taken: it was advisable to choose the nearest railroad station for the journey and, if possible, to state the exact train and its time of arrival so that precautions could be carried out accordingly. Aquariums and salt water were always transported on freight trains, “perishable goods” on either very fast trains or passenger trains, and the more robust animals and plants were sent in small packages by mail. The craze of the 1850s, however, was just that: a craze. According to the British social historian David Elliston Allen in his fascinating study The Naturalist in Britain, the wave of nature enthusiasm in the 1850s was “sloppier, less intelligent, more given to hysteria” than in the preceding decades. Fads were no longer restricted to the bourgeoisie, but now expanded to the middle classes. Only a few years later, “aquarium mania” was already a thing of the past, at least in Great Britain. Nine out of ten aquariums had been either dumped or simply left to their own devices. In 1860 the journalist and botanist Shirley Hibberd wrote about the situation in Great Britain: The “aquarium mania” may be considered as fairly dead: it died out properly and completely; but the aquarium remains, and every earnest student of botany and zoology will prize it as a triumph of art acting as the handmaid of science. We rarely hear of “aquariums

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Title page of Lloyd’s Aquarium Warehouse, London 1858

in trouble” now-a-days, because the thousands who set up aquaria, without the least idea that to be successful they must be managed on philosophical principles, have long ago given them up as “troublesome.”

Typical dredger with hemp tassels

Quite often, the individual experience of the parlor gave way to the collective experience of the large public aquariums found in Brighton and other coastal resorts. An interest for the ocean remained in Great Britain, but it shifted from the shores to the depths of the ocean. In spite of the huge costs, those who could afford it sailed out to sea in the 1860s to hunt for creatures using a dredger—a net tied between a rectangular steel frame. Around this time, in 1859, Charles Darwin announced his theory about the origin of species. Later, as Darwin’s theory of evolution became widely acknowledged, Gosse’s own theologically based idea of evolution lost more and more of its credibility among scientists, which caused him great pain. He became very melancholic and abandoned himself to his varying moods, surrounded by his grandchildren, butterflies, orchids— and his aquarium.

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From Sa lt to Fre sh wa t e r A qu arium The Lake in a Glass

Shortly after its publication in Great Britain, The Aquarium must have landed on the desk of the German malacologist Emil Adolf Rossmässler. The son of an engraver, Rossmässler was born in 1806 in Leipzig and developed an interest in nature at a very early age. After studying theology, he was principal of a private school in the state of Thuringia, in the middle of Germany, before becoming a professor at the tiny forestry college of Tharandt in the Erz Mountains in 1830. During this time he was in frequent contact with the German natural scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, the German Academy of Science in Berlin, and the Viennese Cabinet of Natural Objects. Rossmässler eventually became a private scholar of natural science and gave numerous lectures around the world. Rossmässler was just one of many popularizers of the quickly developing field of natural sciences in the mid-nineteenth century. He knew how to mediate between academic discourse and the public’s desire for entertainment, and he played an integral part in encouraging interest in this subject, against which

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Emil Adolf Rossmässler

both the church and the state displayed great reservations. Proponents of the natural sciences set out to spread the word, earning money by writing articles in magazines and newspapers, publishing lavishly illustrated books, and going on lecture tours. Along with adult education centers and workers’ education associations, the aquarium became a means for Rossmässler to realize his dream of the democratization of knowledge and society. Rossmässler was also a cofounder of the magazine Die Gartenlaube (The Garden House), first published in 1853. A magazine for the “long winter evenings in front of the homely fire,” Die Gartenlaube supplied its readers with images and interpretations from nature and history, which soon became part of popular knowledge. As early as 1854 two articles were published, both entitled Der Ocean auf dem Tische (The Ocean on the Table), dealing with this strange British apparatus known as the aquarium. The articles defined the aquarium as “an enlarged and scientifically constructed goldfish terrine, filled with life-forms from the depths of the ocean and whose complete, abyssal, mysterious richness one could now study on the table, dressed in a night gown and slippers.” This was a “tasteful…scientific luxury.” The anonymous author was optimistic about the contraption’s potential, predicting that “in the course of time, the depths of the ocean, transparent upon our tables, will tell us many a strange tale about nature.” In 1856 another article appeared in Die Gartenlaube, entitled Der See im Glase (The Lake in a Glass). This time Rossmässler was concentrating on a different type of aquarium—one filled with fresh water. In contrast to the saltwater aquarium, which

“The tyrannical, omnipotent, ungovernable ocean floods onto our tables as the neverending source of joy of our gatherings and of our loneliness. We don’t even have to wet our feet or sacrifice the usual tribute from our stomach.” —Die Gartenlaube (The Garden House), 1854

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The first illustration of a freshwater aquarium in Die Gartenlaube

was popular in British coastal towns, the freshwater aquarium was of special interest to people further away from the sea. The accompanying illustration was of a large glass bowl with a wide opening at the top and a few small snails and vigorously growing plants at the bottom. This scene was being watched by a young girl sitting comfortably on a sofa nearby. Rossmässler wrote that he almost threw up his hands in despair after reading Gosse’s book. After all, as a natural scientist, Rossmässler had kept marine animals and aquatic plants in large glasses for several years, but he had not applied any scientific sense to them. According to Rossmässler, foreign plants should only be allowed when domestic types were not sufficient. Gosse’s use of these plants, in Rossmässler’s estimation, was unnecessary, since the unique forms of most domestic plants would appear foreign to readers anyway.

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Various types of plants determined the freshwater aquarium. It was supposed to be a “small botanical garden island” with very little space for a few small fish. Indeed, the article listed and described over fifty different species of plants, while the only recommended animals were the marsh snail, the pond snail, the freshwater pearl mussel, the goldfish and, if necessary, the weather loach or pond-breeding salamander. An aquarium was not the place for “predatory fish” such as the trout, pike, or perch. For Rossmässler, his recommended combination characterized a selfsufficient aquarium in which the evaporated water had to be renewed only occasionally. It was also, he asserted, an “effective instrument to familiarize children with nature.” What had caused this sudden change from saltto freshwater aquariums? Was it an attempt to distance oneself from Gosse, or had the handling and maintaining of saltwater aquariums already come up against too many limitations? In his booklet Das Süsswasser-Aquarium: Eine Anleitung zur Herstellung und Pflege desselben (The Freshwater Aquarium: A Guide for Making and Maintaining It), Rossmässler wrote that it would require a mighty force to raise the small, moderate freshwater aquarium above the minds of the natural scientists and to expose it to the general public. He even explained the depths of the pond as if they were the abysses of the ocean:

Aquarium with sea anemones and starfish, 1857

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Freshwater aquarium with marsh plants, around 1890

What nature conceals at the bottom of ponds and marshes and around their for hydrophobics unapproachable edges will, for most people, remain an everlasting secret, save the fish and crabs which are served up at lunchtime.

By concentrating on fresh water, Rossmässler caused a conceptual separation from that of the world which surrounds the depths of the ocean—a divide that remains even today. A lake or pond simply does not have the qualities of an ocean, in spite of all rhetorical attempts to make it just as attractive, as Gustav Jäger tried to: “In comparison to the ocean, life in fresh water is an idyll, smaller, calmer, but with its own charm because it is closer to us, more comprehensible, homely.” The English botanist Shirley Hibberd went even further and made some interesting distinctions, explaining the differences by way of the emotions evoked by either environment: “The aspect of the Fresh-water tank is different indeed from the Marine; it excites pleasure rather than wonder; amuses more than it astonishes; but there is

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a rare grace in its homely display of waving banners and familiar fishes.” Two camps resulted from this debate. While some chose the easier-to-maintain freshwater aquariums, others preferred the challenges and difficulties of domesticating creatures from the deep. Maintaining a saltwater aquarium was, quite simply, much more exciting. Those of the first camp argued that suitable water was nearly impossible to find. Where could salt water be obtained in landlocked cities? As an author in an 1889 issue of Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift (Natural Science Weekly) stated, the practice of importing salt water left much to be desired. When it finally arrived at its inland destination, “it did not really resemble utilizable sea-water and often had a pungent smell.” In this case, the last resort was a process of filtration, cleaning, and aerating, which more often than not resulted in water that was still unsuitable and was eventually thrown down the drain. The solution to the problem was the preparation of artificial salt water, which was easy enough for chemists, who dissolved in water exact amounts of common salt, sodium bromine, potassium sulfate, sodium sulfate, gypsum, magnesia, and magnesium chloride. This option was beyond most, however, and the convenience of the freshwater aquarium ultimately prevailed when it came to amateur hobbyists. The saltwater aquarium has nevertheless retained its fascination for private households. Although only a small number of aquarists have ever maintained one, it is still with us. Reinhold Hoffmann, aquarist and author of numerous articles in German specialist magazines, was an accomplished advocate of the saltwater aquarium, maintaining that it was immensely more satisfying than its freshwater counterpart: “The inhabitants will unfold freshness and beauty, equivalent to that of their relatives in the open sea.”

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Aquaria scenery from Rossmässler’s first script, 1857

Another issue concerning the saltwater aquarium, was the question of combining different species of marine life, as the prospering of one animal often meant the death of another. By separating and integrating, it should be possible to prevent the aquarium from turning into a battleground. According to Hoffmann, this was possible either by completely discarding the idea of owning “a miniature Noah’s Ark” or by installing a larger tank with different compartments. Therefore, selection of the “ocean’s horrors” was reduced to a sensible number of compatible animals. Man-eating sharks, large octopuses, stingrays, and “thousands and thousands of other species which cavort around the ocean, whether on its bed or close to its surface, or in and around the underwater algae forests” had to remain there. At this moment in time, around 1890, Hoffmann still believed that the envisioned utopian models were impossible to create, though today’s gigantic inland aquariums have realized his dream to admire up close these “giants of the ocean.” In the late 1880s, in an effort to solve the debate between those that wanted the simplicity of the freshwater aquarium and visual splendor of the life-forms that inhabited saltwater environs, aquarists took a drastic stab at cheating nature: Why not

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try to gradually adapt marine animals to fresh water and treat them as if they had never lived in anything else? Eels and salmon served as role models because, though they originate from the sea, they can often be found swimming in rivers. Flounders and sticklebacks also feel at home in both types of water. In Wilhelmshaven, on the North German coast, Hoffmann saw sea anemones, crabs, and fish that had endured such “forced measures” and had survived in fresh water for several months, though he also noted that even the fresh water in Wilhelmshaven might have been salty due to its close proximity to the North Sea. To test his theories, Hoffman looked to animals from the Baltic Sea because of its low salt content (as well as others found furthest east), which he regarded as suitable for adaptation. The crucial point was that a lot of patience was required to make the transition from salt to fresh water as smooth as possible, otherwise immediate death would have been the result. Although here and there encouraging reports were published on successful adaptations of flounders, people seem to have been more fascinated by the idea than the actual results, and the enthusiasm over this new method seems to have faded as fast as it had arrived. While some tried to overturn the laws of nature when it came to presenting marine life outside of its natural environment, others turned to an arguably more absurd solution: the “alcoholariums”—aquariums filled not with water, but with alcohol. This type of preservation was exhibited by the Berlin Museum of Oceanography (later destroyed in World War II) and was featured in a newspaper report from 1906: The creatures swimming in [the alcoholarium] are, as one will notice upon closer attention, already dead, preserved in the poisonous liquid, thus maintaining their full brilliancy of color for centuries to come. Alcohol destroys living tissue, but preserves the dead.

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Glass model of jellyfish

The work of Leipzig-based glass sculptors Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf should also be mentioned here. From 1857 onward, they produced glass models of invertebrates that, as far as they could be kept in captivity, quickly lost their colorfulness. These models gave a good impression of marine animals in places where it was too complicated to keep a saltwater aquarium. Many of the Blaschkas’ models are still on display at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. These fake animals truly have transcended the processes of nature; they perfectly complement the dioramas of natural history museums where stuffed lions and gazellas helped to recreate the illusion of dangerous situations.

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A r r i v in g in t h e U n it e d St a t e s Aquarist Societies and Magazines

According to U.S. magazines of the 1850s, Americans followed the developments of this new apparatus, the aquarium, very carefully. As early as August 1849, an aquarium at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, England, which looked rather like a static garden pond, aroused the brief attention of The American Whig Review, and in 1852 an article entitled “The Parlor Aquarium” appeared in The Living Age magazine, which described the “Wardian case” and Robert Warington’s experiments. Until then, the aquarium had been regarded as an interesting tool for botanists but not for ordinary people. This point of view changed, however, in 1854, after Gosse’s book The Aquarium was reviewed in the The Living Age. The reviewer appreciated Gosse’s attempts to shed light on the functional principles of the aquarium, but he was nevertheless full of reservations: Although in theory it seems easy to form an aquarium, especially at the sea-side...yet it requires some preliminary knowledge, probably some luck, and unquestionably practice and attention.

In the same issue, another article entitled “Customs and Manners under the Water” treated the aquarium in a lighthearted manner, once again hailing Gosse’s book:

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To visit the inhabitants of the sea, in the constrained manner that would have been compulsory in a being formed like man, would have been of little use as regards biographical details. What, then, was to be done? To bring them to us, to be sure, since we could not go comfortably to them—to have them up in a witness-box and make them give an account of themselves. But it was necessary to do this in a particular way, for fish are no more at their ease out of the water, than we are under it; it was necessary to bring a portion of their element with them, and to have all their little comforts about them, such as stones, sand, mud, and marine-plants; it was necessary, in short, for the purposes of science, to have a piece of the sea laid upon our table: and, being necessary, this was done.

If any readers had still not followed the recommendation at the end of the article to buy the book, they would surely do so after reading the vivid sixpage report, “My Aquarium,” published in February 1858 in The Atlantic Monthly. Although his name was not mentioned once in the article, the descriptions of the “Bernhard crab” or the “ghost-like prawns” were undeniably from Gosse. “Come and sit by this indoor sea, day by day, and learn to love its people”: what reader could have resisted such an invitation? Published in 1858, Henry D. Butler’s slim book The Family Aquarium, or Aqua Vivarium—“a complete adaptation to American peculiarities,” as he wrote in the preface—was one of the first two books written in the United States that dealt exclusively with the aquarium. His explanations on how to maintain the aquarium—very similar to those in today’s How-to books—are less interesting than his analysis and the embedded correlations he begins with. Within a short period of time the aquarium, this extremely “attractive instrument,” had become a “necessary luxury in every well-appointed household” and had completely

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The Family Aquarium, title page

Feeding actinians

replaced the old-fashioned “fish-globe” in Europe as well as America: Its neatness and elegance; its fascinating combination of subtle philosophy and commonplace every day facts; its ever-changing, never wearying feature, [sic] of kaleidoscopic novelty; its tempting peculiarity, to thoughtful minds, as an introduction to natural history; all constitute an attraction as chaste as it is beautiful, as refined as it is irresistible.

For Butler, the aquarium represented an extraordinary combination of science and art and became the epitome of nineteenth-century discoveries, just as important as the telescope or microscope. It finally allowed its observers to step into unknown dimensions, allowing them to view the unknown secrets of the deep dark ocean. Butler did not hesitate to mention his own theory of the aquarium, that the new invention is “a faithful copy…a miniature facsimile of the fascinating reality in its exquisite colors, and replete with its inexplicable revelations.” Arthur M. Edwards’s Life Below the Waters or the Aquarium in America was published on the heels of

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Butler’s book. Edwards noted shops in New York that already sold aquariums and the necessary accessories, instructed how to set up an aquarium at home, and introduced some of the ocean’s creatures, but a devastating review in The Atlantic Monthly from September 1858, which accused it of being hastily printed, poorly conceived, and filled with errors, crushed its chances at success. The enthusiasm found in these books and magazines was not solely responsible for the growth of the aquarium’s popularity on this side of the Atlantic. The United States had its own share of pioneers in home aquariums. William Stimson, collector and trustee of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1849, is believed to have owned the first functional aquariums—as many as seven or eight—in the United States; if The North American Review of July 1858 can be believed, he had not even been aware of contemporary experiments in Great Britain. A certain Elizabeth Emerson Damon from Windsor, Vermont is also believed to have been among the first owners of an aquarium in the United States, according to William E. Damon (whose relationship to Miss Damon is unspecified), as written in his 1879 volume Ocean Wonders: So far as I have been able to ascertain, the pioneer inductor of the private aquarium in this country was Miss Elizabeth Emerson Damon...and her first essays were made with the simple apparatus of a two-quart glass jar, with a few fish, some tadpoles and snails, and some Potamogeton (common pond weed); but so perfectly balanced was this young aquarium with animal and vegetable life, that I fell in love with it at first sight.

William Damon was a successful businessman who worked as the superintendent of the credit department at Tiffany’s in New York. In his spare time, he committed himself to natural science and oceanography,

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Illustration of an attack by a giant squid in Ocean Wonders

playing an important role in importing tropical fish to New York as well as participating in the conceptual design of New York’s first public aquarium. In his book, Damon summarizes marine creatures in plain language and dedicates the last section of the book to explanations about salt- and freshwater aquariums. Damon claimed that “the study of natural objects is as good a discipline for the mind as is exclusive devotion to the classics.” Indeed, his enthusiasm was tremendous: The ocean! The vast, glorious, boundless blue! How the vision of sunny hours, inspiring breezes, the invigorating scent of the salt air, and the sparkling of bright sea-foam, rises at thought of the great deep—that restless, deceptive, yet ever-enchanting siren, which lures us in every tone of the gamut to trust ourselves on its sparkling bosom!

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Looking back, Hugo Mulertt was hugely responsible for the increase in private hobby aquariums in the United States Born in Leipzig, Mulertt came to America around 1869 with the second big wave of German immigrants, settling down in Cincinnati and becoming a well known aquarist and florist in the subsequent decade. As Albert Klee notes in his book The Toy Fish, Mulertt’s shop offered a whole range of products: aquariums made of cast iron, sheet metal, terra cotta, or “Cincinnati faience” ceramics, as well as all the necessary accessories such as tuft stone ornaments, ready fish feed, and a special sort of cement for aquariums. He also had his own ingenious goldfish hatchery and was appointed the Assistant Commissioner of Fishes for the District of Southern Ohio. Mulertt discovered that the area surrounding Cincinnati was perfect for cultivating fish and became a very successful breeder of German carp in this region, no doubt thanks to the knowledge he gained from pioneers such as Seth Green and Stephen H. Ainsworth who, according to the November 1868 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, had for decades been breeding salmon and trout in order to release them into rivers. From the end of the 1870s, Mulertt additionally concentrated on importing wild aquarium plants from

Hugo Mulertt

Floor plan of Mulertt’s fish hatchery

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Mulertt’s catalog

the Amazon region. He started breeding these plants in his expansive nursery, and soon his booming business supplied aquarists from all over the country with Sagittaria subulata, his own breed Ludwigia mulertti and, of course, fish. In 1883 his book The Goldfish and Its Culture was published and enjoyed numerous reprints. According to his calculations, about two million goldfish, worth 300,000 dollars, were sold annually in the United States Mulertt exhibited his fish-breeding plants at contemporary industrial fairs such as the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition in 1879 or the Centennial Exposition in Cincinnati in 1888, generating massive exposure and a surge in demand. Just after the Centennial Exposition, he relocated his business to

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Brooklyn, New York, where local aquarist groups welcomed him with open arms. Like Mulertt, Rear Admiral Daniel Ammen of the U.S. Navy also rendered outstanding services to the import of fish. In 1878 he apparently presented the U.S. Fish Commission with goldfish imported from Japan. William P. Seal from Philadelphia also played an important role in the breeding of goldfish, when in 1873 he took charge of the aquariums at the oceanography station in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. A few years later the Bureau of Fisheries in Washington, D.C. commissioned him with the construction and supervision of the U.S. Fish Commission’s exhibit at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Previously only adored by a small number of farflung individuals, the aquarium was now more and more a community venture. The 1870s saw the appearance of the first aquarist societies in Germany, which soon began to publish their own magazines. The Triton Society, founded in Berlin in 1888, was set on aggressively promoting the hobby “by influencing the general public, to confront all existing prejudices and superstitions,” as they wrote in their mission statement. Five years later, the first U.S. aquarist society was founded in New York City by Baron von Schlichting, a German immigrant—it is not surprising, then, that this society was also named Triton and that German was the official society language. Soon after, the Salamander Society was also established in New York, and in 1896 the Aquarium Society in Jersey City, New Jersey was formed. The purpose of these societies exceeded the objectives drawn up in their charters. Just as other nature societies or hobbies, these groups also had psychological ramifications: the amateur naturalists found acknowledgment and appreciation from science professionals for their competent work. In an attempt

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The Aquarium, title page

to receive public approval, according to the historian Andreas W. Daum, the names of these societies were often taken from mythology: “Daphnia and Heros, Isis and Neptune, Proteus and Triton gathered merrily amongst flower lovers, fish breeders and caterpillar collectors.” But the societies were not only characterized by harmony; they were also the place of enthusiastic free-for-alls and conflicts of competence. The societies swiftly developed into hierarchical cliques with their own elite. The development of specialized magazines in the United States naturally paralleled the formation of these societies. The New York Aquarium Journal,

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published for the first time in October 1876 by the natural scientist W. S. Ward, is considered to be the world’s first aquarium magazine, though it unfortunately ceased publication just seven months later. The issues consisted of only eight or ten pages but were packed with advertisements, articles, and columns such as “For Our Young Folks—Told by Uncle Octopus.” From 1878 until the early 1880s, Mulertt’s own magazine The Aquarium appeared in Cincinnati. Ten years later, after relocating to Brooklyn, he resumed publishing the quarterly, which comprised twenty-five pages and contained news of everything dear to aquarists, such as the newest aquatic species or fish disease. The establishment of these specialized magazines, which were eagerly swapped by the interested parties, was another major step toward the popularization of the aquarium.

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E x ot ic Spe cie s a n d Tra n spo r t Diverging Beliefs

In the mid-nineteenth century, when enthusiasm for the aquarium began to explode around the world, private tanks were—with the exception of goldfish— almost exclusively inhabited by animals native to the country of the aquarist’s origin. By the late-1860s, however, the picture began to change dramatically. More and more often, colorful imports “Is it possible to keep a stone from distant countries inhabited the bass and a macropodus in the aquariums. In 1869 the first exotic toy fish same receptacle? If both are of a size which prevents them from reached Europe: one hundred Macropodus, also known as paradise fish, which devouring each other, yes.” —Blätter für Aquarien- und Terra- a French consul in Ningbo, China, sent rienfreunde, 1894 to the Parisian breeder Paul Carbonnier. Breeds of this import were presented in Berlin as early as 1876. In the same year, the animal lover and philanthropist Adophus Busch from St. Louis brought paradise fish to the United States after seeing them in his native Germany. The actual monetary value of fish was dependant on their rarity. The higher the demand for a specific species, the more fish were imported or, if possible, bred until the market was saturated or another fish became the new fad. The aquarium became more and more standardized due to the increasing number of suppliers and specialty shops devoted to this

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Exotic toy fish

Minnow

ever-growing hobby. Fish with bright colors, a new shape, or unusual characteristics were especially prestigious—as for example the viviparous toy fish, the triumphant reception of which enjoyed extensive coverage in all the specialized magazines. It was the colorfulness of the new exotic freshwater fish that made aquarists’ hearts beat faster. But there were also “traditionalists” who tried to counteract this trend. Sometimes the incentive was to keep fish that one caught oneself. Or, if one insisted on owning a foreign fish, it was suggested to keep them together with some native fish, as the author of “A Word for our Proletarians,” published in Blätter für Aquarien- und Terrarienfreunde did in an article 1891. Humble minnows and bitterlings—the “sparrows” of the fish world—were strongly recommended for this role of “proletarians.” This seemingly trivial dispute about minnows, bitterlings, and “foreigners” concealed a more basic question: What is the aquarium hobby really about? Is it the real conception and comprehension of nature, or is it just a distraction, a game,

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vain razzmatazz? Those that felt it was the former criticized the breeding of exotic fish and objected to such inane doings as aquaristic societies handing out prizes for special songbooks dedicated to the hobby, which could put the serious character of naturalism at risk. Hairsplitting became the order of the day: “Is the ‘vivarium sport’ just science or scientific rigor?” asked one specialist magazine. Daum believes that the whole amateur science movement had a “chameleon-like appearance,” always moving between “hobby scientist and private society bliss on the one hand and academic expectations on the other.” Pictures of elephants and giraffes being transported halfway around the world to zoological gardens where they were then presented to awestruck audiences were commonplace. But there was no such fanfare for fish. If they were imported from far away, which had become quite common since the 1890s, their tranquil journey took place in jugs and boxes and was not accompanied by the roars and clamor that followed apes and lions. Nor was there any protest—ethical questions that dogged the displacement of mammals and birds were absent, for the transportation of marine animals was carried out, as Gustav Jäger noted, without any noticeable side effects: While animals of the skies and land suffer to some degree under their displacement into a cage and Advertisement for Mulertt’s Condensed Fish Food, 1883

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experience a change in their behavior, eventually living in an unnatural habitat which prevents the appearance of harmonic impressions, life unfolds naturally in an aquarium where animals are exactly the same as in the wild.

The suffering of the fish in the martyrdom of aquarium life could not be seen. Despite occasional magazine articles on the “appropriate keeping” of animals or on how to counteract animal cruelty, there was no real pity for fish, and the legitimacy of the aquarium was never debated. The question of whether the fish were being kept inappropriately in aquariums was rarely asked, if ever. It is only as recent as 2003 that Scottish scientists at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh discovered that fish could actually feel pain. The transportation of fish over long distances is a science in itself. According to the Berlin aquarist Paul Nitsche, it was “almost easier to import a living elephant than a fish the size of your finger.” The difficulties became very clear in an article published in 1876 in the New York Aquarium Journal that dealt with the transport of eighty-eight Kingyo goldfish from Japan to the United States: The captain of the steamer...built a tank on the steamer to accommodate them, and took in a supply of river water; but it was soon found that the motion of the ship dashed the fish against the sides of the tank and many were lost. To obviate this a smaller tank was built and suspended like a compass, which counteracted the motion of the ship; but notwithstanding all the care bestowed on them only fifteen arrived in San Francisco, all in a very weak condition. Of these, eight subsequently died.

Transport within the United States was less difficult. Hugo Mulertt sent his fish from Ohio and later from Brooklyn right across the country to San Francisco. For transport via rail he used soldered cans that were generic to the coal oil trade, which were

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Simple zinc jug for transporting fish (above) and the box in which they were hung to reduce the ship’s movement affecting the jugs, 1901

fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter with a five-inch opening at the top. The tops were perforated and thus open to the air, and water occupied four-fifths of the total can volume. This method was used extensively until the arrival of shipping bags made of plastic in the 1950s. Around the turn of the century, Nitsche wrote a manual for the import of fish from oversea locales, which also gave seamen, captains, and other voyagers instructions on how to earn easy money with an additional income. Natives caught the animals usually with dip nets or cast nets in the wild. Sometimes they even dammed small branches of a river or used toxins made from bark and leaves. A small emission of these toxins into the water made the fish numb, limiting their movements. Generally, imports took place randomly—if space was available, fish were taken on board. It was always a surprise to discover what had actually made the journey. Jugs made of zinc plate, approximately three feet in diameter and with a wooden base, were recommended for importing fish. The jugs’ outer and inner walls had to be painted white due to the tropical sun and to prevent oxidation. They were hung in robust boxes to avoid being crushed during heavy seas (although these measures were unnecessary if they were transported on larger passenger vessels). Enameled jugs were preferred over zinc-plated jugs because they tolerated salt water and did not undergo chemical bonding, which could harm the gills or inner organs of the fish. Transportation of the fish always took place in open jugs, placed into wicker baskets to protect the enamel. Nitsche reported about one of his friends, a naval officer, who had successfully used a big pine tub—the type usually used for doing laundry —to transport telescope and fantail fish from China and Japan. The tub was tightly closed

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with wooden slats that allowed sufficient light to enter but prevented water from escaping. If these tubs were not completely filled, then there was no need to change the water during a six-to-eightweek voyage. Following this logic, any other type of clean barrel could be used. A “sheet steel fish jug” with a special lid was also thought to be suitable. An integrated aeration device operated from the outside by bellows or, even better, a bicycle foot pump, supplied the jug with fresh air. Stewards, responsible for the import, stored these jugs in their cabins for the journey from New York to Europe. It was even possible to adapt “difficult fish” to the still water of the containers. Wires, canvas, and nets were all used to keep away cigarette butts and tar and coal dust from the funnels, to stop cats from finding a tasty meal, and to prevent the contents escaping from the jugs. The biggest dangers for the fish were suffocation due to overpopulation, eating food unfit for consumption, and contamination from fish that did not survive the journey; when exchanging the water it was also important to remember that the waters varied from place to place. Nitsche thus recommended to gradually adapt the fish to the exchange: If the journey, for example, began with Shanghai water and new water was taken onboard in Hong Kong; at first use 2/3 Shanghai and only 1/3 Hong Kong, then 1/2 Shanghai and 1/2 Hong Kong, then 1/3 Shanghai and 2/3 Hong Kong and finally only Hong Kong water.

The captain always had to be informed of the estimated water consumption, even if that meant that he would prohibit the load. Savvy importers could often win the captain over by pointing out that the

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Specially prepared wooden tub, 1901, and (below) sheet steel fish jug with bellow-aeration device

used water could always be employed to swab the decks. Equally important to fish transporters was the temperature during the journey. The best months for transportation from East Asia were April to October, while fish that were accustomed to lower temperatures could be fetched from New York during the winter months. Once on land, subsequent transport by wagon or on horseback should, according to Nitsche, be categorically avoided, as this could cause the ruin of the whole venture at the last minute. The fish could be violently thrown about and perish. Instead, the fish should be carried either in jugs or in tanks hanging from a pole. In Nitsche’s opinion transportation in hanging jugs was ideal, as the fish would not be thrown about even during a storm. Special rules applied for the shipment of marine animals: actinians, sea urchins, snails, and mussels were packed with seaweed or pieces of sponge into baskets; sessile animals with stones; and crabs in tanks with little water as they “have to have the possibility to stick their noses out from time to time.” The transport of aquatic plants took place in boxes that were also used for shipping grapes, though in the plants’ case, everything was additionally wrapped in moss and damp paper. Transportation involved other dangers too: swindles and dirty tricks were daily business in the toy fish trade. Sailors stole and sold fish, and exporters delivered unordered goods. There were also cases where animals were delivered several times via c.o.d., but not accepted by the addressee; the postal service then auctioned off these animals at ridiculously low prices to the very same person. Agreements saying that only animals that survived transport had to be paid for were similarly tricky. It was not uncommon, according to Nitsche, that “the animals, dead as a dodo, were offered at exorbitantly high prices, but quite often also at give-away prices, sometimes via

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Transport of aquariums on horse-drawn carriages, in the background the zoological mail-order house Glaschker in Leipzig, Germany, around 1900

a pseudo address, often in the most impertinent way through the respective buyer himself.” The following decades experienced a professionalization of the whole process: representatives of the company would pick up the fish at a collecting point and take them to the harbor, from which they could be shipped to other seaports. Given all the risks and rampant corruption, every effort was taken to become independent of the import of fish from faraway places. For many, if not most, freshwater fish could be bred in captivity. It was only much later, with the advent of widespread air travel, that the wish for new, exotic marine fish species could be more easily fulfilled. Even today, however, there is still a considerable loss of fish during flights, no matter how elaborate the artificial environment created for transport.

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Fa sh io n Sh ow Typology of Parlor Aquariums

Before special tanks became available people often kept their fish in kitchen pans and jars. Emil Rossmässler wrote that “housemaids were often wrongly accused of stealing, until the hollowware was rediscovered on the master’s table full of different animals and strange aquatic plants.” He also complained that the glassworks were not producing enough aquariums and “If your sojourn at the sea-side is to be brief, or if you do not that the selection of box aquariums manufeel disposed to purchase one of factured by ironworks was insufficient. But the glass tanks of the dealers in he was confident that the laws of supply aquarian wares,—a race which and demand would soon change this situahas recently sprung up “all along shore,”—take a wash-basin, a tion, and he was right: by the 1860s, aquarmilk-pan, or a foot-bath, and you iums were being mass-produced in every can improvise an aquarium.” possible shape and combination, often so —The North American Review, elaborately decorated that one wondered July 1858 what was more important—the contents, or the aquarium itself. Quite often one or several of the aquarium’s panels were of gray slate, which allowed the water to stay cool in summer and created a pleasant, semi-dark environment for the fish. Most aquariums had a simple box shape, since curved glass made it difficult to see inside a tank and prevented the use of a magnifying glass. Nonetheless, oddly shaped aquariums did exist. One of the most unusual is recorded in an old

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Aquarium installation in the Maurisches Haus at Frankfurt Zoo, around 1860

British drawing of a “cabinet aquarium”: placed upon pompously decorated shelves were approximately twenty glass tanks that decreased in size from the bottom to the top. A picture from circa 1858 has also survived and displays a small aquarium system at the zoo in Frankfurt, Germany, in which seven interconnected tanks stand in front of a window on a scrolled table. Another special form is the paludarium, or marsh aquarium. This combines the aquarium and the terrarium, placing boulders and numerous plants above the water level for amphibians and turtles. Reference books at the time also referred to a finely equipped parlor aquarium, which was also known as a room fountain with flower table and aquarium. The advantageous feature of this apparatus was, as K. G. Lutz described in his book, Das Süsswasser Aquarium (The Freshwater Aquarium), that it cleaned and moisturized the air of the room, having “an extraordinary beneficial effect on your health.” The combination of fish and canaries appeared in numerous variations. One contraption was a waterfilled glass attachment with a hole through the middle that could be placed atop a birdcage. The hole provided just enough space for a canary to sit

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Cabinet aquarium

Combination of cage and aquarium

on a perch and watch the fish swimming around. The idea was not new: already in the first half of the nineteenth century goldfish and canaries had become reluctant parlor companions. Some people even believed to see a strange sort of interaction between fish and bird. They would sit for hours gazing at the animals and actually convince themselves that the fish was dancing to the song of the imprisoned bird. Aquariums were often placed on window sills or even, as shown in an example from Lloyd’s 1858 catalog, attached to windows as window boxes. The placing of an aquarium in front of a window (whether indoors or outdoors) was problematic, as the fish were illuminated by the light from the window and the side facing the observers was always in their shadow. Therefore the fish often seemed colorless and were not shown to their best advantage. Furthermore, the direct sun encouraged algae growth. An improvement to this situation was the “skylight aquarium” in which an indirect ray of light entered the aquarium from a

Window aquarium, around 1858

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Salon aquarium with fountain

Window aquarium

mirror fixed at an angle above it. This caused the plants to grow vertically toward the light and eliminated the cast shadows. With its matte, milky light, this aquarium took on a mystical appearance. The sketch of a “terrace aquarium” surrounded by flower pots dates from the 1890s. This construction required an extremely robust iron frame onto which three different-sized tanks were placed, one upon the other, thus allowing enthusiasts to create various environments and to separate animals that did not appreciate each other’s company. Some aquariums were hung on walls and functioned as “moving pictures.” But these wall aquariums presented hidden dangers, as Hermann Lachmann explained in Blätter für Aquarien- und Terrarienfreunde: Even though these look wonderful after installation, the magnificence does not last for long. It is just folly and extremely unsafe since the aquarium is hanging on a wall. The hooks could come loose allowing the whole aquarium to come crashing down; what an expensive mess that would be.

In contrast, a “floating sea” was a glass bell fifteen inches in diameter and twenty-and-a-half inches high Wall aquarium

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Terrace aquarium

“floating sea” aquarium, 1859

that hung in front of a window inside the room. This aquarium was advertised as being the solution in an 1859 edition of Kosmos Zeitschrift für alle angewandten Naturwissenschaften (Kosmos Magazine for all Applied Natural Sciences). Due to its design, room space could be used for other purposes if need be, a perfect view inside the aquarium was always guaranteed, and above all it was cheaper to install than other aquariums. The glass sphere was held by strong cords and placed in a kind of basket to which the cords were attached. According to the instructions, the three pieces of cord that support the whole aquarium are connected to a piece of twisted hemp string of the same strength. The hemp string is fixed above the window and runs on one side through two interconnected porcelain rings of finger width; therefore it is possible to simply draw up the tank if you desire to use the space in front of the window for another purpose or if the windows are to be cleaned, and can be lowered if the tank is to be cleaned or replaced. Seashells filled with bog soil were placed on the floor of the aquarium as “flower pots.” With this final detail, one could let the aquarium feel the effects of nature like an outdoor pond: rainwater, fresh air, coolness during the night, protection from the sun either via a window blind or a strategically placed parasol, and peace and quiet, because life in this little “floating ocean” was best left to itself. Another special model was the basin or pool aquarium. This type originated in Great Britain and consisted of a clay base that was placed in the ground of winter gardens and hothouses. All these tanks had a rock conglomeration in the middle, on which marsh plants and ferns protruded from underneath. In and around towns these basins, which usually contained a fountain, were seen as a replacement for natural ponds and pools that had either dried up or been filled in. Though pleasant, a

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Basin aquarium in Chatsworth, 1849

good view of the creatures in the water was problematic due to the reduced transparency. The craziest aquarium of all had to be a tank decorated with four Wilhelminian eagles, advertised by a company from Hamburg in an 1895 edition of Blätter für Aquarien- und Terrarienfreunde. Are the eagles just guardposts of what is inside the tank or can this be interpreted as an expression of the owner’s allencompassing patriotism? No one can know. Another strange variant was the “insect aquarium,” which was described in an 1890s article in the same magazine as a “very interesting specialty” worth all the “blood, sweat, and tears.” This kind of aquarium was usually home to aquatic spiders, and according to the author there was nothing more fascinating than watching these creatures build their nests.

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Advertisement for the Wilhelminian aquarium, 1895

Ingenuity knew no bounds if the financial means were not available for a special aquarium. In 1890 a Blätter für Aquarien- und Terrarienfreunde subscriber recounted how he had converted a very inexpensive sulfuric acid jar into an aquarium because he could not afford a glass bell. He wrapped a piece of string soaked in turpentine around the bottle and lit it. After the flames had extinguished, the bottle split into two pieces as if it had been cut with a knife. The portion with the bottleneck functioned as the aquarium. The neck was sealed with pitch-soaked bung, through which a fountain and a waste pipe were fed. The stump of an old tree from local woods was used as a natural base for the apparatus. Along similar lines, later specialized magazines often described aquariums made of stoneware. This seems rather impractical, however, as the animals could only be viewed—if at all—from above, and the light required for plant growth was almost nonexistent. It was the period of small landscapes. The world was presented in quaint tableaus: whether it was a miniature railroad snaking its way through a rugged

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mountainous backdrop or a miniature house in which a child’s doll could “live.” The “ocean landscapes” of aquariums were similarly filled with small tuff grottos purchased from specialty shops or created by the owners themselves out of cement. Another variation were the small swimming islands made of cork into which a small plant pot could be placed. In response to this trend, specialized aquarist magazines—such as an 1886 article in Isis—began to warn of these “dangerous bits and pieces” and “exaggerated affectations” such as small castle ruins, “since they mask the simple and grand beauty of nature.” In 1879 William Damon had stated in Ocean Wonders that during the first two decades since the invention of the aquarium, oxygenation of the water in private aquariums had proven to be best achieved by plants. The best of all means, the true scientific and natural mode, which the Creator himself has adopted, is to oxygenate the water by plants. No other method will keep it so clear. As evidence of this, I can to-day take a tumbler of water out of a tank that has had only the natural aëration of plants, which has not been meddled with for years, and in which I have kept all that time a large and varied assortment of animals; and it will equal the Croton [River] in purity and clearness, and far surpass it in softness, and in living, sparkling brightness.

But Damon was proved wrong, and it was not long before appliances appeared that optimized the water quality of private aquariums. The growing use of electricity in the 1880s and 1890s allowed for flowing water in aquariums, as well as heating devices for tropical fish used to higher temperatures. An example of this new technology was the heated aquarium “Thermokon,” whose base had a domeshaped inward curvature into which a heating lamp could be placed. Another variation was a zinc-plated

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Aquarium with simple aerator

copper cauldron, which was attached to the aquarium and heated by a spirit or oil lamp. A pipe went from the cauldron over the edge of the tank into the water, while another pipe came out of the water and back into the cauldron. The contraption was based on the principle that warm water rises due to its low specific weight, whereas cold water falls. The whole device was triggered by sucking aquarium water into the cauldron through a rubber hose until the cauldron was full. Subsequently, the flame underneath the cauldron was lit. As soon as the water was warm enough it rose from the cauldron via the upper pipe and entered the aquarium while the cold water from the aquarium entered the cauldron via the other pipe. Reflectors were also available that helped to diffuse light onto the surface of the water, enabling a better view inside the aquarium in the evenings or on darker days. And the list of helpful appliances for parlor aquariums did not end here: further optimized fountains in which the oxygen was caught and dragged down by the falling water, but also waterfall systems and elaborate fountain mechanisms enriched the spectrum of aquarium appliances. They were all supposed to ensure a supply of oxygen and a movement of water. One parlor fountain manufactured in Germany worked on the principle of the “Heron fountain.” A continuous fountain was guaranteed by two airtight iron jars that could be rotated around an axis and were interconnected via a pipe. The water flowing from the aquarium compressed the air in the lower jar and the pressure forced the water in the upper jar to spurt out through the pipe. When the upper jar was empty

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and the lower one full, all it required was a simple rotation of the jars around the axis to restart the process. One of the most complicated devices for the aquarium had to be an aeration apparatus that required a three-page description in the Naturwissenschaftlicher Wochenschrift (Natural Science Weekly) in 1889. Two zinc cauldrons, bellows, a regulator, and various pipes were connected to create an installation that could have been mistaken for a forerunner of the intravenous drip. It was supported by a sort of gallows high up in the room. Obviously its designer, the aquarist Hermann Lachmann, realized that the apparatus would reduce the overall aesthetic appearance of the aquarium, and he pointed out that it should not stand right next to the tank, but rather be placed in the next room, the cellar, or anywhere else out of sight. In this case the conduit

Parlor fountain with Heron fountain, 1892

Aerator by Hermann Lachmann, 1889

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would have to be extended and directed around the edge of the room. But how did the thing function? Lachmann tried to explain: The water from the upper cauldron enters the bellows d drop by drop, and is held there due to the back pressure from the aquarium and the winding of the spiral until sufficient water has collected in the bellows to overcome the back pressure. It subsequently drains off and entrains an amount of air from the bellows that is greater than the actual volume of water. The air in the lower cauldron is compressed by the inflowing water and the incoming air and forced through its only escape route pipe 3. From here it makes its way through the regulator e and outflow pipe k to the spray nozzle z in the aquarium, forming fine pearls in the water.

Lachmann’s aerator, which functioned without any water consumption, could be constructed by any plumber. Never mind how strange it all seemed and looked, Lachmann contended, “the well-being of the aquarium inhabitants will be more than enough compensation.” The aquarium and the habitat trapped inside it had no chance of survival without the extremely large and overpowering aeration apparatus, a symbol of the industrial age if ever there was one. Indeed, no longer was nature truly nature. In a period that worshiped technical innovations and during which mechanization took command, the aquarium did not go unaffected. The running of an aquarium required a substantial degree of technical know-how, and this caused Lloyd to write an article for the American Naturalist in 1876: Aquarium work, being hydraulic engineering on a small scale, is essentially the work of an engineer, and not that of an architect, unless he is also an engineer and a mathematician.

The aquarium had become an integral part of the Victorian salon, living side by side with plants and

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French aquarium, 1859

other adventurous objects, enabling contact with nature in the heart of the city. With its organic forms and often flamboyant ornaments it beautified the living room, that place of retreat from the cold industrial world of the nineteenth century. It turned the room into a “living,” loveable world where one’s own identity could be retained. And the aquarium played another important role: it became a catalyst for the imagination, allowing its observers to broaden their minds, to imagine the depths of the human soul, and maybe even trace visions of the unknown. And more: the “moving pictures” not only stimulated the mind but also simulated a journey. Why go anywhere else when the family salon, this mirror to the world, had everything modern, yet was still close to nature? This question must have crossed many a mind.

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Moving images in the living room

“A Ne w Kin d o f Th e a te r” The Large Aquariums

Despite their complicated upkeep, private saltwater aquariums still had—for a short period of time—a small but tenacious following, at first in Great Britain, then on the American east coast, and sporadically in France and northern Germany. In many other countries the saltwater aquarium only really appeared in a much larger form, under professional conditions. Public aquariums were almost always integrated into already well-established zoological gardens. The first public aquarium opened its doors in May 1853 in Regent’s Park, London, not long after the aquarium itself was invented. A classical steel-glass construction resembling a hothouse, the Fish House, as it was known, comprised a vast number of small The interior of the London Fish House, the first public aquarium

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salt and freshwater aquariums. Some were attached to the walls while others stood on tables in the middle of the bright room, covered with slate to keep out sunlight and dust. Given the aquarium was a brand new apparatus, a water exchange system was still a faroff, utopian idea; fresh salt water had to be brought directly from the sea. Alexander Ussner, manager of the Vienna aquarium, remembered in 1860: A cry of admiration and astonishment went literally not only around Europe, but around the whole civilized world when this first water menagerie was opened to the public. The colors and variety of the shapes and forms previously only known to a few scholars unfolded in front of their eyes, and their amazement spread by word and mouth.

This poster advertised Phineas T. Barnum’s curiosity: The “real” mermaid

Soon thereafter, the legendary showman Phineas T. Barnum, who seemed to have a sixth sense for all sorts of curiosities that audiences craved, appeared on the aquarium stage. In 1856, shortly after a visit to London where, as a bankrupt businessman, Barnum gave quite successful lectures on “The Art of Money Making,” he started exhibiting aquariums in his American Museum in New York. The American Museum, located on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in Lower Manhattan until it was destroyed by a great fire in 1865, had been established in 1841 and was an important center for the development of urban entertainment culture in the nineteenth century. Here, the aquarium was presented alongside the “wonders of the world,” which included a “real mermaid” (the torso of

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“FeeJee Mermaid” was actually the upper body of a stuffed ape with the tail of a fish) and a “six-foot maneating chicken.” Other public aquariums soon followed. In December 1857 Scientific American informed its readers of an aquarium that had been set up by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Two years later, in 1859, James Ambrose Cutting and Henry Butler, co-owner of the American Museum and author of The Family Aquarium, opened the Aquarial Gardens in a neoclassical building on Bromfield Street in Boston. The Boston Post hailed a completely new experience: These Ocean Conservatories are filled with rare marine animals imported and collected exclusively for this establishment. They present us with a perfect and striking illustration of life beneath the waters.

The words of a flyer eagerly handed out to passersby were even more flowery: The scene is at once wonderful and intensely beautiful. Hours of delight may be spent watching the habitats of the animals, seizing and devouring their prey and disporting as freely as if they were still enjoying their full freedom in the ocean or river.

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The Aquarial Gardens, Boston 1859

Exterior view of the aquarium in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, 1860

Approximately forty basins containing twenty to thirty gallons of water were arranged in a circle on tables to form a large aquarium panorama. There were perch, crabs, starfish, sea anemones, snails, periwinkles, sunfish, carp, sea ravens, flounders, rays, jellyfish, clams, pickerel, sticklebacks, horned pout, bass, and a few turtles. A man-eating shark was also advertised, but only for a short while; apparently it did not survive very long. In Europe, where competition to open the most impressive aquarium was in full swing, an aquarium was developed in 1860 in the Jardin d’Acclimatation in Paris. It was a windowless brick construction with integrated wall aquariums and looked very much like an arcade. Arthur Mangin, one of the most important popularizers of the natural sciences in nineteenthcentury France, described the building’s interior as “a completely new kind of theater, where the reality of submarine life is displayed.” The lighting principles

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were very different from those of the comparatively simple Fish House in London. The gallery was semidark, the only light source emanating from above and entering the room via the transparent tanks. The precise incidence of light was extremely important; too much would lead to a high degree of algae, resulting in turbid water and reduced transparency. Once visitors had become accustomed to the light conditions, a completely new optical experience awaited them, according to Mangin: As there are no surrounding objects to distract the attention, one completely focuses on the living Polyrama, and because the concept of size is only relative, the pictures start to take on larger and larger dimensions, or their real dimensions vanish, only to reappear in the observer’s perception.

The “Polyrama” refers to the “Polyrama Panoptique,” or Diorama, which was invented by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in 1822. It is a stage designed to

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The corridor of the aquarium in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, 1860

accommodate changing light effects in a dark room, where pictures move around the audience giving them the feeling of being at the center of a wonderful play. The technique was used to great effect at the Jardin d’Acclimatation, making “one forget about how many artificial resources had to be employed to create such an exposition,“ according to the Deutsche Bauzeitung (German Construction Magazine). In this form and size—presented as a copy and simulacrum of the submarine world—the aquarium became a completely new experience, even for those who had their own at home. Never before had visitors been able to see so many marine creatures in such a concentrated form and without external influences. The atmosphere created when large numbers of people stood side by side to view the spectacle helped to intensify the impact even more. Along with the Fish House and the Jardin d’Acclimatation, the short-lived Viennese Aquarium Salon, established in 1860 by Gustav Jäger, was one of the first public aquariums in Europe. Jäger, whose name means “hunter” in German, was an entrepreneur in many fields. At one point he became wellknown for his design of natural woolen clothing and was therefore called “the wool hunter;” his clothing was sold through subsidiaries of the Austrian company Benger and could be found in stores across Paris, London, and New York. In 1854, when the Semmering railroad was completed, giving Vienna convenient access to the Mediterranean Sea, Jäger became an avid marine enthusiast. By 1858 he had begun experimenting with small saltwater aquariums, and within two more years, he managed to open aquariums to the public. Sadly, the venture could not sustain itself, and in four short years Jäger’s salon shut its doors. In 1865 Die Gartenlaube stated that the Marine Aquarium Temple at the Zoological Garden in Hamburg, an “Ocean Fairy Castle,” outshone the London

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Fish House. “The temple of arts, the studio for the exhibition and culture of aquaristic life” consisted of a salon with two galleries and ten large glass tanks at its center, which was surrounded by more tanks in various directions. According to the Temple’s commemorative booklet it was an overwhelming joy to observe the “silent inhabitants of the ocean” while they were “gracefully and magnificently resting, weightlessly swimming, vividly playing, cunningly lurking or eagerly fighting.” Water circulated through the basins, then was discharged, cleaned, and aerated. Photosynthesis was easy to observe, as described in Die Gartenlaube: Like row after row of air bubbles ascending from a glass of champagne, merry bubbles of liberated oxygen fizz from the light-drenched plants at the bottom of the tanks like delicate chains of diamonds. The wonderful creatures therein enjoy this bubbly air champagne and wave and coquet in a tipsy manner with their colorful feather-like tails and gesticulate with their numerous snatching fingers or fly and whiz between the grottos and caves like merry boys running home from school.

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Fish transport over the Alps via the Semmering railroad in the late 1850s

Cross section of the Hamburg aquarium, 1865

A very small, easily overlooked footnote pointed out, however, that this perfectly constructed aquarium was not suitable for common fish like herring or mackerel, which were certain to die within their first day in the tanks. Conclusion: “How little is man able to mimic, what nature accomplishes with ease.” As more public aquariums were constructed, new methods and visions were set forth. Aquarium architects wanted to guide the audience’s fantasies by making not only the tanks look like small rocky landscapes and grottos, but also the exhibition rooms themselves. The grotto fashion was a throwback to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, where the Boboli Gardens in Florence once thrived. The grotto style was to enjoy a powerful renaissance under the forthcoming eclecticism, with one important difference: this time, rather than the grotto itself as the center of attention, it now only served as a facade for the main attraction. The visitors strolled through the ancient grotto and had a glance at the oceanic dream world and the future. The excitement of the “living Diorama” was increased by the new experience of a simulated ocean bed. The grottos had connotations of

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Cross section of the saltwater aquarium at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, constructed by A. and H. Guillaume

Previous page: Salon aquarium

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coral reefs, which are in fact not much more than a huge accumulation of dead animal bodies. In this field the French were the leading nation. The new concept of big aquariums with several grottos was first realized in 1866 on the Boulevard Montmartre in Paris and one year later at the Champ de Mars for the World Exposition. The special attraction at these expositions was a room with a ceiling made completely of glass, allowing the audience to look straight up and observe the activities in the basin above, as if they were at the bottom of the ocean. This was, at least, the idea. In reality, the experience must have been less impressive. When Jules Verne’s fantasies about the submarine world were supposed to become reality at the third World Exposition in Paris in 1878, the Berlin councilman Dr. Ernst Friedel commented that the structure seemed “artificial and uncomfortable—you almost dislocate your neck in this fatal position and see absolutely nothing since the fish hate to be viewed from below.” What is more, this “ceiling aquarium” was not covered over, which meant that its surface could be churned up by the wind and rain. Nearly 20,000 gallons of water above the observers’ heads—what a risky attempt! What

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The All-around aquarium at the World Exposition in Paris, 1867

consequences would a crack in the glass have had, not only for the fish, but also for the visitors? Another grotto aquarium was built in Berlin, in 1867. It was planned as an incorporated enterprise, and its founding committee, which consisted of the German zoologist Alfred Brehm, two bankers, a civil servant, an author, and a constructor, asked the citizens of Berlin to buy shares worth 200,000 German thalers (the equivalent of 150,000 dollars at the time). A two-story aquarium was built on the centrally located Unter den Linden/Schadowstrasse between the fire walls of the surrounding buildings. It was a strange, eccentric complex: nothing could be seen from the outside, not even a single window; daylight only entered the building through the roof. During the first few years, gas lamps gave off a little light. Natural stone from nearby mountainous regions were used to cover the archlike grottos. In May 1869 the aquarium was officially opened in the presence of King Wilhelm I. The newspaper Vossische Zeitung quoted his reaction: “Although the queen had informed me of the aquarium, my expectations have by far been surpassed.” The fifty show tanks held approximately 27,000 gallons of water. In the meantime researchers had gained experience in the artificial production of salt water. The ready-made element entered a well-designed circulation system: water was brought via centrifugal pumps from the cistern in the cellar into the reservoir, which was located approximately fifty feet above the ground. From there, the water flowed through pipes, where it was mixed with air, into the basins. The drainedoff water returned to the cistern after it had been channeled through a pebble stone and sand filter. The glass panels of the water basins on the first floor looked like random breakthroughs in the rock. A fish hatchery was set up on a staircase-like grotto making it possible to follow the metamorphosis from egg to young fish with the help of different brood

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tanks. And there was more to the menagerie than aquatic animals: birds, reptiles, and mammals were all part of the program. Brehm wanted to recreate a trek from the desert, through the jungle, culminating at the ocean. The Deutsche Bauzeitung commended the grotto style: Despite the inventive, naturalistic design of the whole, hardly anything seems to have been searched for or fashioned, not as artificially forced decoration; everything we see appears to have grown organically, to be self-evolved.

Retrospectively, the reporter Dorothee Goebeler recalled in 1907 in a Berlin newspaper her memory of the fantastic pictures on leaving the aquarium: I did not pay attention to my steps, in my ears I heard the quiet sound of the sea, I saw the rising tide and the foaming surf; right in front of me was an unfamiliar world in motion, it was swimming in front of my eyes like a kaleidoscope, the ocean shone for miles around with electrical light, fish criss-crossed the green sea, lobsters and octopuses moved around, and the brown anemone waved and brought me back to the submarine meadow where the sea anemones silently bloom.

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Cross section of the Berlin aquarium, 1869

Three illustrations of the Berlin aquarium, 1869. The hall with the staircase

More than one hundred thousand visitors passed through the Berlin aquarium in the first three months. But significant problems quickly arose: glass panels burst under the enormous pressure; rats inhabited the hollow space behind the grotto walls; the salt water eroded pipes and pumps; finally, the life expectancy of the animals was very short and there were logistical problems with restocking. Like other show aquariums, the operation was not very lucrative. Its survival could only be secured through additional activities such as presenting a gorilla, selling artificially pro-

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duced salt water, or leasing reservoirs to neighborhood delicatessens for keeping lobsters and trout. Although Phineas Barnum had already set up a small aquarium in his American Museum in 1856, the first permanent installation in the United States was the Great New York Aquarium, thanks to the commitment of the businessman William Cameron Coup, a former employee of Barnum’s American Circus, where he was responsible for the advertising campaigns and the transportation of visitors to the show.

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Tour of the sea aquarium

The basalt group

Exterior of the New York Aquarium by night

After Coup saw the newly built public aquariums of Europe in 1872, he proposed setting up an aquarium in the middle of Central Park and charging a small admission fee during the first years. Unfortunately, the Park Commission decided against the idea because the commercial use was not in accordance with their understanding and definition of public space. Undeterred, Coup acquired a property on the corner of Thirty-fifth Street and Broadway and teamed up with Charles Reiche & Brother, importers of rare animals. The New York Aquarium opened in 1876. Children and adults paid an admission fee of 25 and 50 cents, respectively, to enter the aquarium, which also included a library and reading room as well as a “naturalist’s workshop” with microscopes and dissecting tables. Admission also included a concert that served as background music. The exhibition tanks were located on street level, while the engine and pump rooms as well as fresh and marine water reservoirs were housed in the basement. In the center of the exhibition hall sat a circular tank, thirty feet in diameter and eight feet high, known as “the prison house of the whale,” although it was typically used for alligators. Windows of plate glass four feet high and three feet wide were set into its sides. A seal tank occupying a space roughly equivalent in size was also

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Interior of the New York Aquarium

present but, as these creatures were to be viewed from above, its sides were solid masonry. Sharks, skate, large surf bass, and similar marine creatures lived in a sixty-five-foot saltwater tank, while more fresh- and saltwater species were housed in a number of other moderately large tanks. In one, anemones, sponges, porgies, hermit crabs, and flounders could be found while another contained California salmon and lake and brook trout. A highlight of the aquarium was a rockery and pool area for sea lions. The tanks were also equipped with the most modern aeration system of the period: a steam air-pump pushed air into the tanks, which was then fed through tubes made of india rubber hidden amongst the rocks and pebbles. Salt water was regularly delivered on a specially equipped steamer from beyond Sandy Hook, New Jersey. These transports were especially productive as the steamer stopped at different locations on the return journey to pick up animals that fishermen had caught according to prior instructions. A major attraction at the aquarium was the presence of whales, which Scribner’s Monthly called “in itself evidence of the energy and zeal of the manager.” The task of bringing one in was, as one might guess, quite a challenge. In order to catch them, the whales were trapped in a deep bay close to the ocean.

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Releasing the whale into the aquarium

Aquarium at the Swiss National Exhibition

The strait was virtually sealed off by erecting poles along a two-mile stretch. During high tide the poles were submerged below the water, allowing the whales to swim into the bay but trapping them after the tide subsided. The animals were then placed in wooden boxes that were stuffed with algae and transported into the city on special boats, wagons, and trains. In addition to permanent aquarium buildings, temporary constructions were set up for world expositions and industrial and national exhibitions, such as the complex aquariums erected at the 1883 International Fisheries Exhibition in London, or the underground stone grotto aquarium displayed at the Swiss National Exhibition in Zurich the same year, which welcomed its visitors with a pleasant chill and only contained fish from Swiss lakes and rivers. The tanks were arranged next to each other on both sides of a long room, the light entering from above. The running of a public aquarium was usually so expensive that its permanent operation was in most cases only profitable in combination with other activities. Often it had to be subsidized with typical funfair attractions like magicians, jugglers, or unusual animals. Sometimes its location was the reason for a visit: an aquarium opened in 1872 in the seaside resort of Brighton, on the English south coast, with its splendid hotels and a new railway link to London, was so conveniently located at the boardwalk entrance that numerous visitors could not resist the temptation and had to have a

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look at the 132,000-gallon main tank. The architectural design was most peculiar: London architect Eugenius Birch, a designer of marine piers, created a structure reminiscent of a church in VenetianFlorentine “neo-trecento-style.” In the large entrance hall and lining the 224-foot-long corridor were fish tanks in archways leading up to a vaulted ceiling supported by columns of polished red Edinburgh granite and green serpentine marble, with pillars of Bath stone and a mosaic flooring. Each one of the tanks were to be found in a kind of chapel, where the aquatic space behind the glass recalled an altar. The underwater landscapes were made of porous tufa to give the impression they had been transplanted directly from the Devonshire coast. The wide corridor led to a conservatory that had an attractive grotto complete with a cascade of water. Outside, the courtyard had five terra-cotta arches supported by pillars enriched with carvings of mermaids, sea nymphs, and other marine symbols. The small clock tower emphasizing the entrance of the structure became famous all over the world. Although the building was far from ready, it was decided to open on Easter Saturday 1872

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The Brighton Aquarium with its characteristic clock tower

The Stazione Zoologica in Naples, around 1874

with the idea that the official opening would take place the following August, when the premises were to be completed. Queen Victoria’s third son, Prince Arthur, arrived in Brighton that Easter with Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar. The Royal Party expressed a wish to see the new aquarium and it was necessary to carry out immediate work on the roadway so that they and their ladies could enter the aquarium without sinking up to their ankles in mud. With flags flying, the princes enjoyed their visit, pausing to view all the specimens. The press described this impromptu opening as “very propitious,” declaring that “it could scarcely have entered the minds of any of the most sanguine of the Aquarium directors that its opening would be attended by a Prince of the Blood Royal.” The fanfare was a harbinger of the aquarium’s success: later on, the arrival of an octopus caused nearly as much fuss as when a foreign king came to town, and the death of a porpoise evoked as much grief as a national catastrophe. Scientific endeavors called for a different aquarium type. Marine biological stations were located directly at the coast and were equipped for research interests. In 1874 the Stazione Zoologica opened in Naples, Italy; its tuff building also contained several functional

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aquarium tanks. The scientists’ studies were located in the upper part of the building. There were also laboratories, conservation rooms for the marine animals, and an extensive library. Founded by Anton Dohrn, a contemporary German supporter of Charles Darwin’s controversial theory, the renowned complex was filled with the sound of many different languages, as governments from around the world sent their scientists there; German, Italian, British, Russian, Belgian, Swiss, Dutch, and American researchers experimented on a daily basis with the marine creatures they caught themselves or that were offered to them by local fishermen. In the United States, the model of the Stazione Zoologica was copied by Spencer Fullerton Baird, founder of the U.S. Fish Commission. He wanted to create a place for marine biologists to systematically study the sea over a long period of time. Until then, only the Coast Survey’s short cruises with the Swiss scientist and naturalist Louis Agassiz (who came to America in 1847 and later founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University) or the Navy’s occasional multipurposed expeditions produced marine zoological collections. Finally, in 1884 and 1885, two large houses were constructed in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, at Fullerton Baird’s instigation. Amongst other things, these houses also contained a public aquarium.

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Marine research base, Woods Hole

Once they had learned how to handle the pressure differences and cope with decompression sickness, more and more scientists started to descend to the depths of the ocean themselves. Analyzing the animals’ body structures under a microscope in the laboratory was just one facet of their work. In order to more thoroughly understand the complex ecosystem of the ocean, it seemed wiser to do on-site research. Indeed, the legendary argonaut researcher Jeannette Power had foreseen the limitations of the aquarium for scientific purposes already in the 1860s: If one believes that it is possible to discover interesting facts about marine animals with the help of aquariums situated in living rooms or gardens, in cities which are far away from the ocean, one is mistaken.

A photographer on the ocean bed

With the possibilities of deep-sea diving and photography (and later filming) the function of the aquarium underwent a profound change. Now that the richness of the underwater world came into focus, the provisionary nature of the aquarium became apparent. For scientists, it was now merely a tool. However, it continued to serve its purpose of entertaining, educating, and distracting the public, in short: a new kind of theater.

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Th e A qu a riu m a s a D re a m The idea for this book arose after finding a children’s book, which was believed to have been lost, in a Berlin library. In 1869 the then well-known German satirist Adolf Glassbrenner published Reise in’s Meer: Ein Aquarium für die wissbegierige Jugend (Journey in the Ocean: An Aquarium for the Young and Inquisitive) under his penname Julius Reymhold. The book tells the story of a frog and a turtle that make their way across the The dream is the aquarium of the night. ocean. During their journey they —Victor Hugo, Les travailleurs de la mer, 1866 not only come across miscellaneous animals and plants, but also signs that humans have left behind. First, a submarine cable that stretches from one country to another, then a shipwreck and a submarine. At the end of their journey they get caught in a dragnet by a diver who has descended into the abyss in a massive bell, and they are taken to the marketplace. Their ocean journey abruptly terminated, they are sent home, right back where they started from. The last illustration of this book shows the reminiscing frog and the turtle sitting on the rim of a grotto aquarium: When nobody can hear and nobody can see, then they sing with glee: All the hustle, all the bustle How sweet is the sea!

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Journey in the Ocean, title page

Through the coral halls, And the blue paradise! Where the jellyfish are crystal-like, And the fish swim merrily; There lives the beautiful anemone, —Oh, how beautiful is the sea!

Nostalgia and grief over the loss of the ocean world were part of the aquarium experience. In its magic hour, the aquarium was an adventure. The scientist, the collector, the aquarist took marine creatures from nature and put them into a new order, either in the laboratory or in the living room. The ocean came home. At the same time, scientists started systematic analyses of marine life. Until then, the

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In the empire of shells

The glowing of the ocean

The diving bell

submarine world had been terra incognita, around which wild speculations and fantasies had been woven. The original saltwater aquarium tamed these thoughts and quenched the thirst for this strange world. It compressed them into an easily comprehended menagerie, an oceanic garden in miniature, a submarine chamber of wonders. The mysteries and conundrums of the ocean were projected onto the aquarium, fueling its dynamism and popularity. At first, it was mainly filled with the invertebrate marine animals—important for the theory of evolution— but as people developed a taste for more action in the aquarium and gained more knowledge about owning and maintaining one, fish became more interesting. Because it was easier to maintain a freshwater aquarium, a second, “defused” type of aquarium emerged. Fads come and fads go, but ultimately the aquarium stayed. This development was not a continuous process, though. Many did not know how to solve the technical problems, and the frequent changing of the water became an annoyance. Early on in its development, the hobby was largely given up and aquariums vanished from living rooms. But thanks to a number of dedicated aquarists in the United States and Germany, things changed and with the establishment of societies and the publishing of magazines, the privately practiced aquarium hobby developed its strongest dynamism. To the same extent as the aquarium spread and became popular, a small democratization of the knowledge of nature occurred. The aquarium became one of the most popular scientific tools but required not the slightest mathematical knowledge, distinguishing it from physics and astronomy. Although afflicted with some innate complications, the “ocean in a glass” came at just the right time to suffice an ever-increasing layman’s interest in nature.

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In the course of its development the aquarium performed an astonishing functional evolution: while still utilized as a scientific instrument for the likes of Robert Warington and pioneers (“proto aquarists”) such as Jeannette Power, Philip Henry Gosse also used the aquarium for religious purposes; later, after its arrival in Germany and the United States, the aquarium became the primary medium for natural science education; soon it turned into a matter for slipper-wearing hobby scientists, who very quickly started passionate competitions to see who had the most beautiful and rare fish. The aquarium developed into a peculiar mix of business and popular science, but even before the turn of the century it was clear that its educational aspect was not nearly as popular as the sheer joy and gained by owning exotic toy fish. Parallel to this, the freshwater aquarium broke away from the far-reaching associations of the submarine world. In a sense, things came full circle: the popularity and proliferation of the goldfish was a result of early expeditions, leading to the invention of aquariums for scientific purposes; as the aquarium itself gained esteem the world over, ships once again set sail, now in pursuit of exotic species under the auspices of aesthetics rather than science. During the aquarium’s transitional period from private to public, its dimensions changed dramatically, thus enabling completely new staging and dramaturgy. The aquarium turned into a collective experience, comparable to those at funfairs, national exhibitions, and museums. But everything could have been different. The journals of the late-nineteenth century—forerunners of today’s aquarist magazines—published in London, Paris, New York, Washington, Boston, and Berlin, overflowed with “ground-breaking” inventions. At second glance the “ocean on the table” did not really seem to be any less of a paradox than the “foldable

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birdcage,” “the electric walking-stick,” or “the flying ship.” But because it suited the period so well and was nourished by so many different factors—financial interests, a booming fascination with natural science, oceans, and collecting, and the formation of societies—this aquarium did not land in the attic like so many of its contemporaries. Within a short period of time, it became the topic par excellence, effectively picked up as a central theme in different discourses, and was legitimized. It did not, therefore, take long for it to become the most natural thing on earth. The wonders of the ocean and ponds were simply turned into pets. When writing about the history of the aquarium, one should not forget the ecological repercussions closely connected to the catching of marine animals. Some pioneers suppressed the consequences of their activities, while to this day there are marine-life advocates speaking against the practice of capturing and showcasing aquatic plants and animals for entertainment or experiment. Along the coastline, as Gosse described in his books, the hunt for plants and animals caused real devastation, and by the beginning of the twentieth century the coastal landscape had completely changed. In his book Seven Tenths, James HamiltonPaterson explicitly holds “zoology with strong religious tendencies” responsible for this development. In 1907 Gosse’s son Edmund—in contrast to Philip, a convinced Darwinist—put matters straight in his biography of his father: The ring of living beauty drawn about our shores was a very thin and fragile one. It had existed all those centuries solely in consequence of the indifference, the blissful ignorance of man. These rock-basins, fringed by corallines, filled with still water almost as pellucid as the upper air itself, thronged with beautiful

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An electric walking stick, manufactured by the Viennese company Elektrotechnischen Bureau. The bulb at the end of the stick is protected against damage by a strong glass knob

sensitive forms of life,—they exist no longer, they are all profaned, and emptied, and vulgarised. An army of “collectors” has passed over them, and ravaged every corner of them. The fairy paradise has been violated, the exquisite product of centuries of natural selection has been crushed under the rough paw of wellmeaning, idle-minded curiosity. That my father, himself so reverent, so conservative, had by the popularity of his books acquired the direct responsibility for a calamity that he had never anticipated, became clear enough to himself before many years had passed, and cost him great chagrin.

Despite all efforts the saltwater aquarium remained a game of naturalness against artificiality, a materialized but unavoidably incomplete dream of the ocean. It also functioned as a souvenir from a period before the ocean became exposed to the exploitation of humans. Its innate idea, going back to Gosse’s maritime “Noah’s Ark,” already included the imminent danger of the destruction of the ocean 150 years ago when The Aquarium was published. At the same time, the inhabitants of the aquarium are manifestations of a dream of overcoming time, since fish, jellyfish, and other marine creatures have existed for millions of years and hardly changed. In contrast to the majority of toy fish for fresh-water aquariums, marine animals (despite considerable improvements in the supply of plankton) are still very difficult to breed. Most of them are caught without consideration and sometimes with the use of toxic chemicals such as cyanide. The complicated ecosystem of the coral reefs is simply paid no mind. More than half of the fish are already dead before they are even loaded onto a cargo plane to Europe, the United States, or Japan. In spite of all the warnings, the trade with imported fish from the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands is still booming. Different institutions give varying figures: today,

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fish are the second most popular pets in the United States (after cats, but before dogs). The catching of colorful, tropical saltwater fish is a lucrative business. In 2000, two-and-a-half pounds of aquarium fish from the Maldives were worth five hundred dollars, the same amount of food fish only six. According to a global UN study from 2003, more than twenty million tropical fish are caught per year for trade purposes in Europe and the United States, aside from up to twelve million corals. Some marine-water aquarists have mixed feelings when it comes to nature conservation: on the one hand they complain and condemn environmental damage or losses, but on the other hand they often tend to forget about the negative consequences of their hobby. The desire to collect and create a miniature world remains still today. But the preconditions are different now, and not only due to awareness of ecological consequences. The understanding of what the highly complex ecosystem really is has changed; it is no longer characterized by the naïveté of the nineteenth century. Passionate aquarists today try to determine which organizing principle a collection responds to, why exactly certain objects belong to one collection and not others. Maybe one day the carefully arranged miniature parlors, snow globes, and living room aquariums in which a peaceful and intact world is simulated, will vanish. Until then, the Bonsai oceans and lakes live their life as a naïve-ironical accessory in an apartment decorated with lava lamps and hardoy chairs. Aquarium, Aquarius: a new era has begun. Be it in Monterey, Bournemouth, Okinawa, Sydney, Genoa, or Barcelona—today ultra-modern oceanariums set the tone and show the way to a more authentic, “reallife” view of marine animals. Nevertheless, the construction of “nature” in an artificial framework is still afflicted with distinctive contradictions arising from the interaction of economic interests, preservation,

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and educational demands, as Susan Davis has impressively analyzed in her book Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Irrespective of this, the oceanariums of the twenty-first century continue the legacy of the aquarium. The oceanariums are the extreme, radicalized form of the good old aquarium, where thoughts unfold of a new utopian ideal. The beginning of these big aquaristic submarine gardens, the oceanariums, can be traced back to a facility built in 1937 at Marineland, in St. Augustine, Florida. It was originally designed only for making underwater films, but soon the marine mammals displayed in a gigantic tank surrounded by aquariums attracted many visitors. Today, the difference between aquariums and oceanariums can best be studied in Lisbon, Portugal, where the Aquário Vasco da Gama, which opened in 1898, is located. One look is enough to tell that the small building has seen better days. Inside it is narrow and sticky, and everybody who is not completely indifferent must feel pity for the large ocean turtles that vegetate here on a few plates of concrete. The selling of “take-away” fish makes the place even more pathetic. The situation in the Oceanário, located several miles east on the site of the 1998 World Exhibition, is completely different. The inventive building in the shape of a cube is located directly on the banks of the River Tejo and does not only contain a gigantic tank that can be seen from different sides and multiple levels, but also enables visitors to experience the climate, animal kingdom, and vegetation of different regions in four different zones. Young and old stroll through the silent halls separated from sharks and rays by only a thin glass wall. Here, one gets the impression that the marine animals are also observing the humans. It is the perfect place to remember the British artist and naturalist Henry Noel Humphreys’s prophetic

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words about the aquarium in Ocean Gardens, published in 1857: In its present form, it is only a ornamental; but the time will come when we shall have immense crystalwalled seas, covering acres of ground, like the crystal palaces of the present, in which the whale, the shark, and other titans of the deep, will disport themselves with their natural enemies, for the amusement and edification of man.

Which utopia will follow the oceanarium? Maybe in the not too distant future humans will decide to move into the ocean. Often enough, they have spun dreams about it and even created architectural plans for submarine palaces. If this were to happen, the last phase of the aquarium’s design history would bring about a complete reversal of the relationship between humans and the ocean: no longer would the swimming pool be the only aquarium for humans, but the ocean itself would perform this role. Until such a day arrives, we’ll have to make do with our provisional ocean at home.

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A ppe n dix Acknowle dg ments

This book did not become reality overnight and would probably not even exist had it not been for a spontaneous and wonderful conversation with Nettie Aljian from Princeton Architectural Press in Frankfurt am Main in fall 2003. The German version of this book soon landed on the desk and in the competent hands of Nicola Bednarek, editor at Princeton Architectural Press in New York City. She is also the person who gave me constructive help for a revision of the original version. Scott Tennent then did a truly great job copyediting the English translation. I would also like to thank the many people who have supported me during this project. First of all, Gudrun Fröba and Rainer Nitsche from transit Buchverlag, who published the German edition; Hannelore Landsberg from the Natural History Museum in Berlin, who established some important contacts and helped me in the institute’s library; Stanley H. Weitzman, Curator of Fishes at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who sent me valuable documents; Anke te Heesen from the MaxPlanck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, who not only had time for an interesting discussion but also arranged some important contacts; and René

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E. Honegger from Zurich, who very kindly put me in contact with Paul van den Sande from the European Union of Aquarium Curators in Antwerp. I also wish to thank Hans-Albert Pederzani, who introduced me to Werner Rieck. Werner Rieck, a self-confessed aquarist and herpetologist, allowed me to use the library of the Triton society and supplied me with the otherwise unobtainable but marvelous book on fish transport by Paul Nitsche. I am grateful to Claude Arnal from Juillac/France, who provided information on Jeannette Power de Villepreux and patiently answered all of my questions; Peter R. Gilder from Arts and Designs of Japan in San Francisco, who provided the Japanese illustration on page 22; and Lee Finley, who sent me a copy of the first American book on aquaria. I would like to express my thanks to Frank Eyssen and Stephan Gollasch from the Hamburg Ozeanhaus project, Anna Bernhard, Ann Thwaite, Emma C. Spary, Rebecca Stott, Albert Klee, David C. Allen, Harro Strehlow, Michael Tolksdorf, Daphne G. Fautin, Sabine Hackethal, Ursula Harter, and James Hamilton-Paterson. And many thanks to my friends Detlef Feussner, Beate Heine, Ana Tipa, and Ulrich Meyer with whom I discussed this project, and to Annette Kaiser, who helped me solve technical problems. Last but not least, to Ashley Marc Slapp for translating this book into English.

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Selected Bibliography Allen, David Elliston. The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. ———. “Tastes and Crazes.” In Cultures of Natural History, edited by Nicholas Jardine, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. “The Aquarium.” In The North American Review, July 1858, 143–57. Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Baratay, Eric, and Elizabeth Hardouin-Fugier. Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. Barber, Lynn. The Heyday of Natural History 1820–1870. New York: Doubleday, 1980. Bechstein, Johann Matthäus. Naturgeschichte der Stubenthiere. Gotha: Ettinger’sche Buchhandlung, 1797. Butler, Henry D. The Family Aquarium; or, Aqua Vivarium: A New Pleasure for the Domestic Cirle: Being a Familiar and Complete Instructor upon the Subject of the Construction, Fitting-Up, Stocking, and Maintenance of the Fluvial and Marina Aquaria, or “River and Ocean Gardens.” New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1858. “Colman’s ‘European Life and Manners.’” In The American Whig Review, August 1849, 159–76. Coomans, Henry E. “Conchology before Linnaeus.” In The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe, edited by Oliver Impey, et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Corbin, Alain. Lure of the Sea. The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. “Customs and Manners under the Water.” In The Living Age, August 26, 1854, 414–16. Damon, William E. Ocean Wonders: A Companion for the Seashore; Freely Illustrated from Living Objects. New York: Appleton, 1879. Daum, Andreas W. Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998. Davis, Susan. Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Delumeau, Jean. Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture 13th–18th Centuries. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Drouin, Jean-Marc, and Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent. “Nature for the People.” In Cultures of Natural History, edited by Nicholas Jardine, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Edwards, Arthur M. Life Beneath the Waters; or, The Aquarium in America. New York: H. Baillière, 1858. “Fish-Culture in America.” In Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, November 1868, 731–39. Frey, Hans. Das Aquarium von A bis Z. Radebeul: Verlag J. Neumann-Neudamm, 1957. Gage, Matilda Joslyn. “Woman as an Inventor.” In The North American Review. May 1883, 478–90.

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Gautier, Théophile. Paris et les parisiens. Paris: Boîte à documents, 1996. Giedion, Sigfried. Mechanization Takes Command. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948. Glade, Heinz. Das Rätsel der blauen Scalare: Von Fischen und Züchtern. Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen, 1966. Glaschker, A. Jubiläums-Katalog. Leipzig, 1925. Self-published. Glaser, Hermann. Industriekultur und Alltagsleben. Vom Biedermeier zur Postmoderne. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1994. Gosse, Edmund. The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1890. ———. Father and Son. New York: W. W. Norton, 1907. Gosse, Philip Henry. A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast. London: John Van Voorst, 1853. ———. The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. London: John Van Voorst, 1854. “Gosse’s Aquarium.” In The Living Age, August 26, 1854, 229–30. Gould, Stephen Jay. “Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly.” In Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1998. Hamilton-Paterson, James. Seven Tenths. London: Hutchinson, 1992. Heesen, Anke te. The World in a Box: The Story of an Eighteenthcentury Picture Encyclopedia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Hervey, George Frangopulo, and Jack Hems. The Goldfish. London: The Batchworth Press, 1948. Hibberd, Shirley. Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste. London: Groomsbridge and Sons, 1856. Hoffmann, Reinhold Eduard. Seewasser-Aquarien im Zimmer. Magdeburg: Creutz, 1886. Humphreys, H. Noel. Ocean Gardens: The History of the Marine Aquarium, and the Best Methods Now Adopted for Its Establishment and Preservation. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1858. Jäger, Gustav. Das Leben im Wasser und das Aquarium. Stuttgart: Franckh, 1868. Jahn, Ilse, ed. Geschichte der Biologie. Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, 2000. Keller, Conrad. Das Leben des Meeres. Leipzig: Hermann Tauchnitz, 1895. Keller, Otto. Die antike Tierwelt. Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1913. Kisling, Vernon N., Jr. (Ed.). Zoo and Aquarium History: Ancient Animal Collections to Zoological Gardens. Boca Raton, London, New York, Washington, D.C.: CRC Press, 2001. Klee, Albert J. The Toy Fish: A History of the Aquarium Hobby in America—The First One-Hundred Years. Pascoag: Finley Aquatic Books, 2003. Leeuwen, Thomas A. P. The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998.

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“Literary Notices” (review of “Life Beneath the Waters; or, The Aquarium in America”). In The Atlantic Monthly, September 1858, 509. Lloyd, William Alford. A List with Descriptions, Illustrations and Prices of Whatever Relates to Aquaria. London: 1858. Self-published. ———. “Aquaria: Their Past, Present, and Future.” In American Naturalist, October 1876, 611–21. Lutz, Karl Georg. Das Süsswasser-Aquarium und das Leben im Süsswasser. Stuttgart: Hänselmann, 1886. Mangin, Arthur. Der Ocean, seine Geheimnisse und Wunder. Berlin: Schlingmann 1866. ———. Les Jardins, l’histoire et descriptions. Paris: Alfred Mame et fils, 1867. Marshall, William. Die Tiefsee und ihr Leben. Leipzig: Hirt, 1888. ———. Die deutschen Meere und ihre Bewohner. Leipzig: Twietmeyer, 1895. Mostar, Herrmann. Die Arche Mostar von ihm selbst gezimmert: Geschichte der Stubentiere und die Stubentiere in der Geschichte. Stuttgart: Henry Goverts Verlag, 1959. Mulertt, Hugo. The Goldfish and Its Systematic Culture with a View to Profit. Brooklyn: Hugo Mulertt, 1883. “My Aquarium.” In The Atlantic Monthly, February 1858, 426–31. New England Aquarium (Old Aquariums). http://www.neaq.org/ about/history/1885.html (“Boston Aquarial Gardens”) Nitsche, Paul. Der Import von lebenden Fischen. Berlin: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, in Kommission bei Fritz Pfenningstorff, Berlin, Verlag für Sport und Naturliebhaberei, 1901. Ocean, The: A Description of the Wonders and Important Products of the Sea. New York: G. Lane and P. Sanford, 1884. Olalquiaga, Celeste. The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience. New York: Pantheon Books, 1998. “The Parlor Aquarium.” In The Living Age, August 14, 1852, 335. Pomian, Krzysztof. Collectors and Curiosities. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1991. Rebière, Alphonse. “Madame Power, une naturaliste oubliée.” Bulletin de la Société des Lettres, Sciences et Arts de la Corrèze 21 (1899): 303–329. Rehbock, Philip F. “The Victorian Aquarium in Ecological and Social Perspective.” In Oceanography: The Past, edited by Mary Sears and Daniel Merriman. New York, Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1980. Reymhold, Julius. Die Reise in’s Meer: Ein Aquarium für die wissbegierige Jugend. Berlin: Verlag von A. Hofmann & Co., 1869. Rieck, Werner, ed. Mertensiella: Die Geschichte der Herpetologie und Terrarienkunde im deutschsprachigen Raum. Rheinbach: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Herpetologie und Terrarienkunde, 2001. Rossmässler, Emil Adolf. Das Süsswasseraquarium. Leipzig: Verlag Hermann Mendelsohn, 1857.

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Schlee, Susan. The Edge of an Unfamiliar World: A History of Oceanography. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1973. Schleiden, Matthias Jacob. Das Meer. Berlin: A. Sacco Nachfolger, 1867. “The Smithsonian Aquarium at Washington.” In Scientific American, December 19, 1857, 113. Sonrel, Léon. Le fond de la mer. Paris: Hachette, 1868. Spary, E. C. “Codes der Leidenschaft: Französische Vogelsammlungen als eine Sprache der vornehmen Gesellschaft im 18. Jahrhundert.” In Sammeln als Wissen, ed. by Heesen, Anke te und Spary, E. C. Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2001. Steele, John H., et al. Encyclopedia of Ocean Sciences. London: Academic Press, 2001. Stott, Rebecca. “Through a Glass Darkly: Aquarium Colonies and Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Marine Monstrosity.” Gothic Studies 2, no. 3 (2000). ———. Theatres of Glass: The Woman Who Brought the Sea to the City. London: Short Books, 2003. Thomson, Charles Wyville. The Depths of the Sea. London: Macmillan and Company, 1873. Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth. Science and the Classics. London: Oxford University Press, 1940. Thorndike, Joseph J. Mysteries of the Deep. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1980. Thwaite, Anne. Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London: Faber and Faber, 2002. Wabnitz, Colette, et al. From Ocean to Aquarium: The Global Trade in Marine Ornamental Species; United Nations Environment Program’s World Conservation Monitoring Center (UNEP-WCMC Biodiversity Series No. 17). (Cambridge, UK: 2003) document available on the Internet: www.unep-wcmc.org/resources/publications/WCMC_Aquarium.pdf Ward, W. S. “The New York Aquarium.” In Scribner’s Monthly, March 1877, 577–92. West, R. A. Fresh and Salt-water Aquaria: Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1864. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1865. Zernecke, Ernst. Leitfaden für Aquarien- und Terrarienfreunde. Leipzig: Verlag von Quelle & Meyer, 1913. Issues of the following magazines have been consulted: Blätter für Aquarien- und Terrarienfreunde Die Gartenlaube Isis Kosmos—Zeitschrift für alle angewandten Naturwissenschaften Le magasin pittoresque Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift

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Illustration Credits Allen, David Elliston. The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994: pp. 19, 57 Amtlicher Bericht über die 40. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte. Hannover 1866: p. 13 Archive Claude Arnal: p. 29 Archive of the author: pp. 18, 59, 72, 105, 109, 116 bottom, 117 Archive Lee Finley: p. 101 Archive Albert Klee: pp. 73–76 Arts & Designs of Japan, San Francisco: p. 22 Barber, Lynn. The Heyday of Natural History, 1820–1870. New York: Doubleday, 1980: p. 38 Bechstein, Johann Matthäus. Naturgeschichte der Stubenthiere. Gotha: Ettinger’sche Buchhandlung, 1797: p. 27 Beebe, William. 923 Meter unter dem Meeresspiegel, Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1932: p. 10 Blätter für Aquarien- und Terrarienfreunde, 1890: pp. 63, 92 Cassel’s Household Guide, 1870: p. 107 Deutsche Bauzeitung, 1869: pp. 111–113 Die Gartenlaube, 1865: pp. 61–62, 70, 106 Geyer, Wilhelm. Katechismus für Aquarienliebhaber. Magdeburg: Creutz, 1892: p. 95 top Glaschker, A. Jubiläums-Katalog. Leipzig, 1925. Self-published: p. 85 Gosse, Philip Henry. The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea. London: John Van Voorst, 1854: pp. 34, 40–41, 43, 45, 51 Hartwig, Georg. Das Leben des Meeres. Glogau, np: 1862: pp. 26, 32 Hibberd, Shirley. Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste. London: Groomsbridge and Sons, 1856: pp. 30, 88 middle L’Illustration, Journal universel, 1860: p. 103 Jörg Klam Photography © Bernd Brunner: p. 143 Kearley, George. Links in the Chain; or Popular Chapters on the Curiosities of Animal Life. London, 1862: p. 55 Keller, Conrad. Das Leben des Meeres. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1895: p. 58 Kosmos—Zeitschrift für alle angewandten Naturwissenschaften, 1859: p. 90 Kuhn, Franz. Der kleine Goldfischteich. Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1935: p. 23 Lloyd, William Alford. A List with Descriptions, Illustrations and Prices of Whatever Relates to Aquaria. London: 1858. Self-published: pp. 56, 88 top Le magasin pittoresque, 1855: pp. 88 bottom, 90, 102 Marshall, William. Die Tiefsee und ihr Leben. Leipzig: Hirt, 1888: pp. 14 bottom, 46–47, 54 Mulertt, Hugo. The Goldfish and Its Culture. Brooklyn, 1883. Selfpublished: pp. 79–80 Museum of the City of New York: p. 100 Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift, 1889: pp. 95 bottom, 128

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Nitsche, Paul. Der Import von lebenden Fischen. Berlin: Selbstverlag des Verfassers, in Kommission bei Fritz Pfenningstorff, Berlin, Verlag für Sport und Naturliebhaberei, 1901: pp. 82–83 noaa Photo Library: p. 14 top Rathbun, Richard. “The United States Fish Commission.” In The Century, March 1892: p. 119 Reymhold, Julius. Die Reise in’s Meer: Ein Aquarium für die wissbegierige Jugend. Berlin: Verlag von A. Hofmann & Co., 1869: pp. 122–125 Rossmässler, Emil Adolf. Das Süsswasseraquarium. Leipzig: Verlag Hermann Mendelsohn, 1857: p. 65 “The Salt Water Aquarium at the Paris Exposition.” In: Scientific American Supplement, No. 1300, December 1, 1900: p. 108 Scherpner, Christoph. Von Bürgern für Bürger. 125 Jahre Zoologischer Garten Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt am Main, 1983: p. 87 top Scherren, H. The Zoological Society of London. London: np, 1905: p. 99 Schleiden, Matthias Jacob. Das Meer. Berlin: A. Sacco Nachfolger, 1867: pp. 12, 31, 33, 36, 49, 52–53 Thorndike, Joseph J. Mysteries of the Deep. New York: American Heritage Pub., 1980: p. 11 Ward, W. S. “The New York Aquarium.” In Scribner’s Monthly, March 1877: pp. 114–115, 116 top Warmus, William, www.warmus.com: p. 67 Weekly Welcome, 1879: p. 98 Wiese, Josef. Das Meer. Berlin: A. Schall, 1907: p. 120 Wilcke, E. Aquarien und Terrarien. Duderstadt: Wagner, 1885: p. 94

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A Selection of Aquariums and Oceanariums North America: Albuquerque, NM: Albuquerque Aquarium, www.cabq.gov/biopark/aquarium Baltimore, MD: National Aquarium in Baltimore, www.aqua.org Boston, MA: New England Aquarium, www.neaq.org Camden, NJ: New Jersey State Aquarium, www.njaquarium.org Chattanooga, TN: Tennessee Aquarium, www.tennis.org Chicago, IL: Shedd Aquarium, Chicago, www.sheddaquarium.org Corpus Christi, TX: Texas State Aquarium, www.texasstateaquarium.org Dallas, TX: The Dallas World Aquarium, www.dwazoo.com/aquarium.html Honolulu, HI: Waikiki Aquarium, University of Hawaii-Manoa, www.waquarium.otted.hawaii.edu Key West, FL: Key West Aquarium, www.keywestaquarium.com La Jolla, CA: Birch Aquarium, http://aquarium.ucsd.edu Long Beach, CA: Aquarium of the Pacific, www.aquariumofpacific.org Los Angeles, CA: Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, www.cabrilloaq.org Monterey, CA: Monterey Bay Aquarium, www.mbayaq.org Myrtle Beach, SC: Ripley‘s Aquarium, www.ripleysaquarium.com Newport, Kentucky: Newport Aquarium, www.newportaquarium.com San Francisco, CA: Steinhart Aquarium, www.calacademy.org/aquarium Seattle, WA: Seattle Aquarium, www.seattleaquarium.org Vancouver, British Columbia: Aquarium Marine Science Center, www.vanaqua.org Europe Barcelona, Spain: L‘Aqùarium de Barcelona, www.aquariumbcn.com/ Berlin, Germany: Aquarium, www.aquarium-berlin.de Bologne-sur-Mer, France: Nausicaä, Centre National de la Mer, www.nausicaa.fr Bournemouth, United Kingdom: The Bournemouth Aquarium, www.oceanarium.co.uk Brest, France: Oceanopolis, www.oceanopolis.com/ Genoa, Italy: Acquario di Genova, www.acquario.ge.it Hamburg, Germany: Ozeanarium (planned), www.ozean.tv Hull, United Kingdom: The Deep (Submarium), www.thedeep.co.uk La Rochelle, France: Aquarium de La Rochelle, www.aquarium-larochelle.com Lisbon, Portugal: Oceanário de Lisboa, www.oceanario.pt London, United Kingdom: London Aquarium, www.londonaquarium.co.uk

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Naples, Italy: Acquario, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, www.szn.it Plymouth, United Kingdom: National Marine Aquarium, www.national-aquarium.co.uk Stockholm, Sweden: Aquaria Vattenmuseum, www.aquaria.se Stralsund, Germany: Aquarium Deutsches Meeresmuseum, www.meeresmuseum.de Tromsø, Norway: Polaria, www.polaria.no/main/polaria_engelsk/default.htm Valencia, Spain: L‘Oceanographic Asia: Enoshima, Japan: Enoshima Aquarium, www.enosui.com Kagoshima City, Japan: Kagoshima City Aquarium Osaka, Japan: Aquarium Kaiyukan, www.kaiyukan.com/eng Okinawa, Japan: Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium South Africa: Cape Town: Two Oceans Aquarium, www.aquarium.co.za Australia and New Zealand: Canberra: Canberra Zoo and Aquarium, www.zooquarium.com.au Hillarys: The Aquarium of Western Australia, www.aqwa.com.au/main.asp Melbourne: Melbourne Aquarium, www.melbourneaquarium.com.au Napier, New Zealand: National Aquarium of New Zealand, www.nationalaquarium.co.nz Sidney: Sidney Aquarium, www.sydneyaquarium.com.au Townsville: Townsville Reef Aquarium, www.reefhq.org.au

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About the Author

Bernd Brunner is a writer and journalist. He attended the Free University Berlin and the University of Washington in Seattle and has worked for German and French television. His interests include the relationship between man and nature, and the cultural history of landscapes and technologies. You can find him on the Web at www.berndbrunner.com.

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