Will be evening star during the month, rising on the 1st at 11:24 in the forenoon, and setting next morning at 1:14; on the 15th, rising at 10:29 a. m., and setting on the 16th at 12:19 a. m.; and on the 29th, rising at 9:35 a. m., and setting at 11:25 the same evening. Its diameter is 2.6″. Motion direct, amounting to 16′ 56″ of arc. On the 4th, at 6:33 a. m., is 11′ north of the moon; and on the 7th, at 9 a. m., is 90° east of the sun. Rises about forty-eight minutes earlier than Saturn.
Whoever wishes to perform something noble, if he would produce some great work, collects quietly and perseveringly the mightiest powers into the smallest space.—_Schiller._
A lecture delivered at the Monterey Assembly, Pacific Grove Retreat, California, 1883.
It is said of Milton that in two short lines of poetry he made four mistakes in Natural History. He said of a whale:
“At his gills takes in, And at his trunk lets out a sea.”
Now, in the first place, the whale has no gills; second, he takes in air instead of water; third, he throws out expired air; fourth, the water “spouted” is thrown up by the force of expiration, not out of the animal’s body, but water that may lie between the “blow-hole” and the surface of the sea.
I am not so sure but Milton made more than four mistakes in these lines. For whoever starts out on a wrong premise will follow a line of mistakes continually. Nevertheless, mistakes attentively observed may be profitable. We learn by mistakes. Unsuccessful experiments are mistakes of a kind—something wrong in the formula. The first aquarium I tried to start I made more mistakes than Milton made in his two lines. I made mistakes the second trial, and the third, and a dozen more times. And when I have succeeded in some instances, it was by accident, and to-day I can not tell why I sometimes failed, or why I sometimes succeeded. I have the consolation, however, of company in this respect. One of the most successful managers of aquaria says that he would give very much if he knew how to grow some of the higher marine algæ as one grows plants in a garden. Occasionally he has succeeded, but he confesses it was not by skill, but by chance.
I propose, therefore, that for a little while we consider the sea as an aquarium—a place adapted to the growth of animals and plants. Our subject is somewhat large, I must confess, but if we can see and understand how these things live and grow in the ocean we must be able to grow them in our parks, and possibly in our houses. For what Nature does on a grand scale may also be done in a small way; and principles that govern the successful growth of plants and animals in a bottle of sea water must be the same that govern the fauna and flora of the Pacific Ocean.