CHAPTER III.
COLLECTING SPECIMENS.
To gather specimens is much more pleasant than to purchase them, though an inexperienced person would be pretty sure to bring home, from the sea side, many things utterly unfit for the tank. As a rule, green weeds are the best, the red sorts offer some lovely specimens that do well in an established tank, though none of them succeed in recently prepared artificial water. Brown and olive coloured plants are to be wholly avoided, they wither soon, and spread pollution around them so as to endanger the whole collection.
Ordinary shore gatherings are quite useless for the purpose of the aquarium; the drift is composed of torn specimens of unsuitable plants, and we must seek for specimens at the extreme low-water mark, or in the tide-pools which remain full during the whole of the ebb.
During spring tides is the best time for making collections, and it behoves excursionists who cannot go to the sea side very often, to make their arrangements for such trips, in accordance with the state of the moon as indicated in the almanac. New and full moon are the times in which the tide rises highest and sinks lowest, and much disappointment will be avoided if such proper times are chosen.
Any one who may wish to gather a few specimens for a tank, should be provided with a jar or two, and a basket. A geologist’s hammer and a chisel are also necessary. By
