226 



Extract of a Letter from Dr. V. Gunson Thorpe, R.N., China 

 Station, Dated 19th Sept., 1892. 



(Read hy Mr. G. Western, November 18th, 1892.) 



Doubtless yoiT will be glad to hear from an old friend, and 

 of the progress of Rotiferous research in this far-off Empire. 

 My ship is lying at Wuhu, a Chinese city on the banks of the 

 magnificent Yangstze Kiang river, 26 miles from its mouth. 

 China is simply a paradise for the microscopist, and the life in 

 its fresh waters has, I believe, been wholly untouched. Stand- 

 ing at a given point anywhere on the plains of China one is 

 surrounded on all hands by scores of ponds, in which grow the 

 splendid Lotus Lily. The fields are intersected by dykes for 

 irrigation purposes in all directions. Here, if anywhere, the 

 links connecting the different species and genera will be found, 

 and some, if not many, of the existing genera will have to be 

 materially altered to admit the new Chinese fauna. I am 

 flattering myself that my next paper will cause somewhat of a 

 sensation amongst our community of Rotifer hunters. To 

 enumerate some of the new discoveries in China I have found 

 a magnificent Melicertan, with eight lobes to its corona, and 

 for which, of course, a new genus will have to be created. I 

 have found in the rice fields of Wuhu a new species of Trochos- 

 phsera, in which the globe is unequally divided by the ciliary 

 wreath. Also a Rotifer with a corona not unlike Lacinularia 

 socialiSi but with four bullae round its neck like Megalotrocha 

 alhqflavicans. A Rotifer has been found with a corona distinctly 

 that of Megalotrocha, but with no bullae round the neck. It 

 constructs for itself also a mucous tube — a Megalotrocha or 

 Lacinularia (I have not quite decided which), the ventral 

 surface of which is covered with prickly spines. Also a new 

 Notops. Megalotrocha semibullata swarms in nearly all the 

 ponds here. Now I have to confess an error. I have found 

 once again Bhinops (?) orbiculodiscus. It possesses a deeply-set 

 dark crimson eye. How on earth I came to overlook it when I 



