102 Mr Loudon's Visit to the Valley of Death, 



near its posterior extremity, by which the ova and living young 

 (for these species are also viviparous) are excluded. A striking 

 analogy to this position of the male organs is presented by many 

 of the mollusca *. 



NOTE. — In the first part of this Memoir, at p. 223, a Note of interrogation 

 has been inadvertently omitted after Nervous System, which the reader 

 will be so good as to supply. 



Visit to the Valley of Death, in the Island of Java. By A. 

 Loudon, Esq. In a Letter to Professor Jameson. 



My Dear Sir, 

 The following is an extract from my journal of a tour through 

 the Islands of Java and Madara last year : — 



" Balor, Sd July 1830. — This evening, while walking round 

 the village with the I^atteh (native chief), he told me that there 



• In a late number of Oken's Isis (1831 Heft. 4. p. 403), I observe that 

 Dr Eschweiler considers as fully demonstrated what Dr Ehrenberg only ha- 

 zards as a probable conjecture, viz. that the Monads and other allied genera 

 are only the young animals of the Kolpoda, Paramcecice, Sec. in their first 

 stage of development. He founds his opinion on the fact of his always hav- 

 ing observed monads appear first in the water of a bottle, which he happen- 

 ed to be daily examining, in prosecution of his researches into the ova and 

 early states of some of the microscopic fungi ; and that gradually from day to 

 day he witnessed the successive appearance in the water of the VorticellcBj 

 Rotatorice, and others of the more complicated forms. He does not mention 

 whether these monads could be detected ; nor does he seem to have actually 

 seen the metamorphosis of the simplest Polygastrica into the highly organized 

 Rotatoria ; so that as yet the question remains for solution. 



Dr Eschweiler farther seems to consider, the minute gelatinous-looking 

 corpuscles, which adhere to the roots of the vorticellse, and which seem to be 

 afterwards evolved into perfect animals similar to their parent trunks ; as the 

 commencement of animal life, by the spontaneous productions of its first ele- 

 ment, — a simple animated vesicle. The hastiness of this conclusion will be 

 at once apparent to those who have perused the body of the above memoir. 

 For we have there seen that although the real source of this reticular spawn- 

 like matter, has not been fully made out with regard to the Vorticell<s ; the ac- 

 tual exclusion of a substance exactly similar from the body of the Kolpoda 

 cucullus, is a matter of actual observation. We are therefore entitled by an 

 almost irresistible analogy to conclude, that both are derived from the same 

 source. M. G. 



