Free Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms by Stephen Jay Gould Page B

survived until 1887, long outliving the good baronet and several heirs who received this lowly but hardy coelenterate as a legacy that may not have been entirelywelcome.
    (The history of aquariums has spawned a small but thorough literature. I read this story of Sir John in an excellent article by Philip F. Rehbock, cited in the bibliography to this book. I also benefited from Lynn Barber’s general book, published in 1980, The Heyday of Natural History, 1820–1870. But I have relied mostly on two primary sources from my personal library: Shirley Hibberd’s Rustic Adornments , second edition, 1858; and the classic work by one of the greatest Victorian naturalists, The Aquarium , by Philip Henry Gosse, second edition, 1856.)
    In a similar story, recounted by all major sources on the origin of aquariums, Mrs. Thynne, a lady of means, brought some corals from Torquay to London in 1846 “for the purpose of study and the entertainment of friends” (againquoting Shirley Hibberd). “A stone jar was filled with sea-water; the madrepores [corals] were fixed on a large sponge by means of a needle and thread. They arrived in London safely, and were placed in two glass bowls, and the water changed every other day. But the six gallons of water brought by Mrs. Thynne was now exhausted and must be used again. She here devised means to freshen it for seconduse.” We now switch to Mrs. Thynne’s own account, and to another statement about the source of actual work in homes of leisure:
    I thought of having it aerated by pouring it backwards and forwards before an open window, for half or three-quarters of an hour between each time of using it. This was doubtless a fatiguing operation; but I had a little housemaid, who, besides being rather anxiousto oblige me, thought it rather an amusement.
    In later experiments, Mrs. Thynne did add plants to approximate a natural and sustaining balance, but she never abandoned her practice (or her housemaid’s effort) of aeration by hand, and thus never built a truly self-sustaining aquarium: “I regularly placed seaweed in my glass bowls; but as I was afraid that I might not keep the exact balance required,I still had the water refreshed by aeration. I do not know from which, or whether it was from both causes, that my little flock continued to thrive so much, but I seldom had a death.”
    Interestingly, the key discovery that led to the aquarium of the 1850s did not arise directly from experiments with marine organisms, but by creative transfer from another technology for rustic adornment that hadspawned an even more intense craze during the 1840s—the Wardian case for growing and sustaining plants in small, “closely glazed cases.” Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, a London surgeon by profession, began his experiments in the late 1820s. By enclosing plants in an almost airtight glass container—a “closely glazed case” in his terminology—Ward learned how to encourage growth and avoid either desiccationor fouling of the air, all without human input or interference. The moisture transpired by plants during daylight hours would condense on the glass and drip back down to the soil at night. So long as the case remained sufficiently sealed to prevent escape of moisture, but not tight enough to preclude all movement of gases in and out (so that oxygen could be replenished and carbon dioxide siphonedoff), the Wardian case could sustain itself for long periods of time.
    Dr. Ward’s invention provided far more than a pleasant bauble for moral enlightenment in Hibberd’s settings of domestic bliss, for the closely glazed case played a key role in Victorian commerce and imperial expansion. Plants in Wardian cases could survive for months at sea, and distant transport became practical for the firsttime (for species not easily cultivated from seed). In her 1980 book, The Heyday of Natural History , Lynn Barber writes:
    The directors of Kew Gardens began to plan even more large-scale movements of