Jon Griffin's Blog

One of the leading public aquariums in the world today Monteray Bay aquarium

The tradition of keeping fish and other aquatic creatures in captivity indoors goes back at least as far as the Roman Empire, and the Chinese began moving their gold carps back and forth between ornamental outdoor ponds and small indoor display containers during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The word aquarium is derived from latin and consists of the two words aqua, which most people know means water and the suffix -arium, which roughly means “a place for relating to”.

This Latin origin of the word can be seen in many different languages and not only in romance languages like Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

The language of flowers was developed in the Victorian Era

The Victorian era was an era of rapid change as the rural society turned into a urban society, it was also a time of contraditions.. During the Victorian era child labour existed side by side with cultivation, dignity and higher morality, it was a time of a lot of different social movements..

Few people have a correct view of the morals of the Victorian viewers and even fewer do as an example know that Queen Victoria collected nude drawings of men while at the same time communication between lovers was so proscrived that courting couples communicated in clandestine ways such as by using the language of flowers.

Laurette Lovell (1869-1936):

Laurette Lovell arrived in Tucson with her family from California at the age of thirteen. The budding artist responded positively to the vastness of the landscape and the richness of the desert flora, as well as the romantic Spanish missions, Papago women and Apache warriors. However, she was particularly inspired by the ollas, or clay pots, crafted by the Tohono O’odham people, and began to decorate them with intricate scenes of ancient ruins and missions, Native American figures, and detailed desert scenery.