eyes from behind
jutting rocks and the mouths of sea caverns, they looked somewhat like
smuggler sailors!

Tanks 10 to 13 have fish in them. The Wrasses are very beautiful in
colour. Most gorgeous indeed, if you can look at them in a particular
way. Tank 32 has been made on purpose to display them. It is in another
room.

No tank in the Aquarium is more popular than Tank 14. Enthusiastic
people will sit down here with needlework or luncheon, and calmly wait
for a good view of--the cuttle-fish!

Cuttle is the name for the whole race of cephalopods, and is supposed to
be a corruption of the word cuddle, in the sense of hugging.

They are curious creatures, the one who favoured us with a good view of
him being very like a loose red velvet pincushion with eight legs, and
most of the bran let out.

Yet this strange, unshapely creature has a distinct brain in a soft kind
of skull, mandibles like a parrot, and plenty of sense. His sight,
hearing, touch, taste, and smell are acute. He lies kicking his legs in
the doorway of his favourite cavern, which he selected for himself and
is attached to, for a provokingly long time before he will come out.
When he does appear, a subdued groan of gratified expectation runs
through the crowd in front of his window, as head over heels, hand over
hand, he sprawls downwards, and moves quickly away with the peculiar
gait induced by having suckers instead of feet to walk with.

Tank 15 contains eels. It seems to be a curious fact that fresh-water
eels will live in sea-water. I should think, when they have once got
used to the salt, they must find a pond very tasteless afterwards. They
are night-feeders, as school-boys know well.

Tank 16. Fish--grey mullet. Tank 17. Prawns.

If with the fishes we had felt with friends, and with the lobsters as if
with hobgoblins, with the prawns we seemed to find ourselves among
ghosts.

A tank that seems only a pool for a cuttle-fish, or a cod, is a vast
region where prawns and shrimps are the inhabitants. The caves look
huge, and would hold an army of them. The rocks jut boldly out, and
throw strange shadows on the pool. The light falls effectively from
above, and in and out and round about go the prawns, with black eyes
glaring from their diaphanous helmets, in colourless, translucent, if
not transparent armour, and bristling with spears.

"They are like disembodied spirits," said my husband.

But in a moment more we exclaimed, "It's like a sc