Excerpt from What is an Aquarium? by Shirley Hibberd

The term vivarium was first applied to the vessel1 containing a collection of specimens of aquatic life. The first vivarium of such a kind, on anything like a large scale, was that opened to public exhibition in the Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens2. Many naturalists had previously made experiments to ascertain some certain method of preserving aquatic animals in a living and healthy state. The vivarium, which is the result of those experiments, may be considered as an imitation of the means employed by nature herself in the preservation of the various forms of animal and vegetable life which populate the oceans and the streams.

The vivarium is, therefore, no recent or sudden discovery, but a growth of years. Its present perfection is the fruit of many patient investigations, trials, disappointments, and determinations to achieve success.

The term vivarium applies to any collection of animals—to a park of deer, a rabbit warren, a menagerie, or even a traveling show containing an asthmatic lion, a seedy cockatoo, and a pair of snakes that are hourly stirred up with a long pole. For this reason, such a term could never convey the very special idea of a vessel containing such specimens as form the stock of the aquarium. When this was felt, the prefix aqua was added, to convey the idea of the water medium in which the specimens are immersed.

This invention led us to the word aqua-vivarium, a compound of too clumsy a character to remain long in use. It is the water that gives the collection its special character, and water always reminds us of old Aquarius3, who treats us to an annual drenching from his celestial watering pot. Naturally, people wanted to give the place where they kept their confined watery companions Aquarius’ name: an aquarium. The term that referred to old Aquarius stuck. Since it is better to follow than oppose what people want to call something, we’ll leave the philological4 part of the question to the intellectuals and adopt aquarium as the name for our collection of underwater creatures.


1 A vessel is a hollow container.
2 This is what is now known as the London Zoo. It opened in 1828.
3 Aquarius is a constellation that is depicted as a person pouring out a pot of water. This figure is a part of astronomy, mythology, and astrology.
4 Philology is the study of the historical development of and relationships between words.

19
Select the correct answer.
How does the author connect vivariums and aquariums in this excerpt?

A.
She argues that zoos should be filled with aquariums rather than vivariums.
B.
She explains how the term aquarium grew from the word vivarium.
C.
She indicates that vivarium is a clumsier term than aquarium and should not be used.
D.
She describes why vivariums are better vessels for fish than aquariums.