AN AGED JAPANESE DWARF, ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD—A CORNER OF THE HORTICULTURAL BUILDING.
In no structure within the grounds is the outward expression so sympathetically reflective of its architectural purpose as in the Fisheries Building. Itself reflected in the blue lagoon, in its architectural functions and sculptural ornament, it in turn reflects the lacustrine life of the waters, which not only almost lave its foundation walls but actually pour into its interior in fountain and cascade and gigantic aquaria. As we follow around these green translucent walls within, our passage lit only from the diffused light transmitted from above the water, we can almost fancy ourselves walking on the actual river-bed, ogled by familiar forms of sun-fish, perch, or pickerel; or perhaps wandering as in a dream among fair ocean caves abloom with brilliant sea-anemones, and embowered with mimic groves of branching corals and all manner of softly swaying sea-weed—graceful crimson laminaria reaching to the surface of the water, responding in serpentine grace to the soft invasion of waving fin. Rare living gems of fishes, very butterflies of the deep, float past flashing in iridescence with every subtile turn of their painted bodies. Star-fish, at first apparently stationary, as though in mid-water, glide across the illusive plane of glass, with their thousand fringy discs of feet. Strange crabs and mollusks and bivalves sport on the pebbly bottoms, and portentous monsters, with great gaping mouths, threaten us as they emerge from their nebulous obscurity and steal to within a few inches of our faces.
PORTAL OF THE FISHERIES BUILDING.
All of its interior ichthyological features might have been anticipated even at the threshold of the building, with its rich and effective portals, where so many of these very forms are seen petrified in surface ornament. The building is in the form of a rectangular central structure with two octagonal annexes, each with its own beautiful portal, and connected to the main edifice by curved colonnades, with arch and balustrade—portal and pillar, capital, entablature and arch and panel—everywhere sculptured with ornaments whose themes are drawn from the subaqueous life to which the building is dedicated. The very balcony upon which we lean is supported by columns composed of four ingeniously and gracefully interlocked dolphins, while the pillars on right and left and throughout the entire exterior suggest curious geometric fossils from the deeps. Here a spiral procession of huge toads, whose uncouth shapes thus embodied in conventional ornament are singularly agreeable and effective. Each successive pillar is a study alike for the naturalist or designer—here a sinuous procession of river-horses (hippocampus), the incurved tail forming a volute repeated with pleasant effect in the spiral bands of ornament. Accommodating star-fishes embrace their respective pillars, touching points in geometric design. Here are eels and fishes meandering among bulrushes and arrowheads. Lizards, crabs, and turtles, each combine in effective ornament about their particular columns, which are surmounted by capitals of even greater ingenuity and effectiveness of design, perhaps because less geometric. Gaping frogs leaping among water-weeds; lobsters captive and sprawling in their wicker “pots;” fishes entangled in the meshes of nets, or engaged in mortal combat, their gaping mouths finely utilized in effective points of shadow—the modelling of each and all suggests the perfection of a cast from nature. To those who look for a happy blending of architectural purpose and harmonious ornament, this building will be a welcome innovation. To the naturalist or the idler in quest of the mere picturesque, the Fisheries Building with its wandering façade and colonnade, its roof of ruddy tiles and almost Moresque richness of surface ornament in high relief, will be found well worth careful study.
How many are the obvious natural themes yet awaiting their sculptured memorial in the temple of architecture. Must the classical and testy acanthus
