3-053-660 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

At the Crystal Palace: feeding the cuttle-fish in the Aquarium, 1873. The Shah of Persia in London. 'The Shah was so much pleased with the Crystal Palace that he chose to go there on Thursday week, instead of taking his departure from England, as he had intended, on that day. It was an ordinary shilling admission day, with no particular novelty or specialty in the list of entertainments...His Majesty...descended to the marine aquarium, where Mr. W. A. Lloyd, the superintendent, was in waiting to receive him. As the Shah came to the glass front of each tank, the food on which the creatures in it are fed was dropped down from above. Nothing could exceed the interest manifested by the Shah in all that he saw. He stood some minutes watching the cuttles darting from the miniature rocks down upon crabs as the latter sank to the bottom, seizing their prey and returning with it to the crevices whence they had descended. He expressed much wonder at observing that when the cuttles reached the bottom they became the colour of the sand, and that on their ascent through the water they resumed the pinkish tint'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.