First edition. Published only three years after P.H. Gosse's, The Aquarium (1854), which began this Victorian craze, this scarce, finely illustrated work includes attractive, hand-coloured plates of marine life suitable for the aquarium. Henry Noel Humphreys (1810-1879) was, among other things, an illustrator, naturalist and entomologist (he collaborated with J.O. Westwood, as illustrator of a number of books on butterflies and moths). He also wrote and illustrated works on Greek and Roman coins, archaeology and the art of writing and printing. Freeman 1833.