The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1866-10-27
Che Wdtt G.itp.
AN ARTIFICIAL OCEAN.
A Huge Aquariam-Pfts,C hasms and
Caves,
er in .Au the Year Round, saws:


A writer in AL the Year Round says
AS the steamer from Folkestone to Bon-
logne nears the.chalky outline of the French
coast, the traveller cannot well fail to notice
strange, craggy, sharp pointed looking AZ
fair, brown in hue and unlike anything ne Is
familiar with--except an iceberg, as repre-
sented in travelling panorama, supposing
the ice to have been touched over with red
ochre. Appealing to the Captain or the
through railway guard, the said traveller will
be informed that sit is the new aquarium
adjoining the Establishment des Baines de
Mer'
The exterior of this monster aquarium is
by no means pleasing to the eye, neither did
it at all impress the visitor who pens these
notes, on being entered. We gazed into sun
dry pits; some had water in them, from oth>
ers the tide had gone out, and the few living
things which were there at the ebh, like Bar
kis, had gone out with it A few habby
shore crabs, some wrinkles and pectens, gasp
ing for air and water a tea~urchin or two,
their Jackets Of lime and membrane so dry
that their spines and suckers were fixtures
like themselves, several dead and dying fish
these made up the sum total of the treas
ures from the deep. 1t seemed chaos of
pits, holes and INDISPENSABLE openings.
There were legions of tile>pipes, which aps
peared to have no definite direction, leading
to every place and from every place, crossing
and recrossing until the eye failed to take in
anything but an inextricable confusion Of
holes aud lines Of rope. 1t suggested the
idea of its being the work of beavers and
muskrats if one could have imagined them
equal to making draining pipes and heaping
up tuns of concrete. In this state of baffled
hope Frenchman beekoued the visitor to
follow him, aud shook his head at all he had
been contemplating. We crossed several
deep pits ON narrow planks, threaded our
way past pile Of limy looking rocks, down
over slanting kind of place where water
was dropping from stream above that tum-
bled into chasm and disappeared, and after
winding along damp, intricate, labyrinth
like passage, we came suddenly into IN inn
mense cavern. The cavern is, at rough
guess, about sixty feet long, and not quite SO
wide. The center is supported on massive
pillars, made to resemble stalactites. whle
through the arched and gloomy roof light
steals in mysteriously.
Real as the cave looks, still much more
strongly is the idea Of being really under the
sea brought home to one when along the
sides and fronting the entrance are veritably,
and not metaphorically, a number of small
seas; cavern>like openings are skilfuly made
in the sides of the vault, the fronts Of which
are of glass, let into the Irregularities of the
concrete; the interiors of these holes are of
all shapes, and followed into quaint dens and
lurking places for sea FISH to skulk and hide
in; only few Of them yet are completed,
but in those that are filed with sea water the
light is SO artfully and ceverly admitted that
one can see no end TO the space. 1t is like
gazing into an illimitable sea of water
sea, looked up through, instead of down
into. ee
The artist by whom this clever production
has been originated, is NJ. Edouard Be'en-
court, and under his clever and artistic man
agement it is rapidly growing toward compile
ton. Report whispers that this same artist
is to be commissioned to erect another mon
ster aquarium for the coming Paris eshibi>
ton. There is not question as to this at
present being the largest aquarium in the
world, and it is not too much TO say in praise
of our neighbors on tine other side OF the
channel, that they will confer benefit on the
world If the managers Of these little oceans
exemplity the art Of pisiculture, which. as
art bearing directly on the question of sup
plying food at cheap rate to the poor, stands
second to none.