844 Thk Zoologist — August, 1867. 



that albinos are by no means so uncommon among them as Mr. Bell 

 supposes. 



Descending from suclders, which are confessedly the most perfectly 

 organized of animals, to the Salpac, which are among the least perfectly 

 organized, we find this avism an imperative and absolute law. 

 Chamisso, in his treatise, ' De animalibus quibusdam e classe Ve ran inn 

 Linneana, Fasc. 1, dc Salpa,' shows that this avism or alternation of 

 generations is complete, and subject to no exception. The Salpac are 

 gelatinous, transparent marine animals, generally found in the form of 

 a chain, but frequently also as detached individuals having considerable 

 resemblance to a link of the chain. These two widely separated 

 animal forms were formerly considered, as well they might be, distinct 

 genera, and it was reserved for Chamisso to discover and divulge their 

 true character. He found that the solitary Salpac, when mature, 

 always contained in the ovary a chain of associated Salpac, all linked 

 together exactly in the manner of the adult associated Salpae. It 

 appears to have occurred to him that there was some affinity between 

 the solitary and the associated Salpa;, and that the solitary Salpac 

 might possibly be the detached links of the associated chain ; but he 

 was quite unprepared to consider the former as the parents of the 

 latter. His astonishment was therefore great, when, in dissecting 

 associated Salpa;, he found that these invariably contained solitary 

 Salpac ; to use his own words, as translated by Professor Busk, he was 

 forced to the conclusion " that all solitary Salpac produced associated 

 ones, and that all associated Salpac were parents of solitary ones, and 

 these again of the associated, and so on." Chamisso proceeds to amplify 

 and elucidate this by adding, " so that a Salpac mother is not like her 

 daughter or her own mother, but resembles her sister, her grand- 

 daughter and her grandmother." Like every other discoverer, 

 Chamisso had the full weight of scientific authority brought into 

 antagonism with the conclusions at which he arrived ; two points which 

 may be very appropriately introduced here, were vehemently urged 

 against him, Jlrst, the great difference between the associated and 

 solitary Salpac, and, secondly, that there was no similar instances of 

 alternation throughout the animal kingdom. The scientific authorities 

 of the day (1819), not content with simply pooh-poohing these dis- 

 coveries, attempting by argument to refute them ; Jbrsl, by throwing a 

 doubt over the accuracy of the observations ; and, secondly, by giving 

 them some other explanation. When I look back on the treatment of 

 Chamisso, I cannot but feel comfort that the reception of Mr. J. V. 



