CURRENT LITERATURE.
be, above all things, a " practical " work, dealing exhaustively with the construction, arrangement, and management of fresh- water and marine aquaria ; and it is most emphatically what it claims to be. The clergyman who writes the first portion of it, treating of fresh-water aquaria, tells us in a modest preface, which, however, is not devoid of quiet humour, that he has always been fond of natural history, and that when ho was a boy, ho frequently looked forward to one day possessing an aquarium so large that he might collect as many creatures as he liked from the neighbouring ponds and streams, place them all together in his tank, and then " make myself quite happy by watching the habits and the changes of my captives." Mr. Bateman was not quite so successful as he would have liked to be, partly because he could not get his aquatic friends to live altogether as a happy family. But his failure set him to reading about and otherwise getting up the subject of aquaria, and the result is a substantial treatise, full of well-digested information and practical advice,—an ad- mirable one to put into the hands of boys with an enthusiasm for science. Such boys will find here everything they wish to know about the making and the management of an aquarium, about water- plants, amphibians, snails, mussels, water-bugs, crustaceans, &AL, given concisely and simply, and yet fully. The subject of marine aquaria forms the second part of the volume, and Mr. Reginald Bennett treats it as exhaustively and satisfactorily as Mr. Bate- man treats that of fresh-water aquaria.
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