160 TREUBIA VOL. II, 2—4. 
At the meeting of the Town Council referred to, Mr, VAN AALDEREN 
discussed an earlier proposal to make no further grants towards the upkeep 
of the model native village of Taman Sarie, on which occasion certain 
members had asked for data concerning the state of public health there. 
Mr. NEEB in this connection remarked a.o. that Taman Sarie was not 
to be made healthy by local sanitation, as the marine fish-ponds nearly two 
miles north of Taman Sarie, had been proved to be the breeding-places 
of a very dangerous malaria-transmitting mosquito which swarmed to 
Taman Sarie to get its meals of blood there. If those ponds could 
only be kept clear of all vegetation of algae, then, according to Mr. NEEB, 
these hatcheries of mosquitoes would very likely disappear. 
Mr. VAN BREEN remarked that the views of the Civil Medical Service 
(Burgerlijke Geneeskundige Dienst) relative to the marine fish-ponds 
as sources of the malaria-peril, had of late undergone considerable 
alterations, 
In the lecture to the Hygienical Circle, to which reference is made in the 
above, Mr. VAN BREEMEN discussed the materials concerning the spread 
of malaria at Weltevreden and Batavia, collected by him in 1917. In 
connection with the data relative to spleen-index, mortality, breeding places 
of malaria-transmitters and the occurrence of malaria bearing mosquitoes in the 
houses, the speaker arrived at the conclusion that the endemic prevalence 
of malaria at Batavia, can only be accounted for on the assumption that an 
invasion takes place by the dangerous malaria transmitter Myzomyia ludlowi 
THEOBALD from the enormously productive breeding places, formed by 
the coastal strip of land, characterized by brackish water and marine fish- 
ponds, towards the South, where practically no /udlowi breeding places 
cet (72) | 
The discussions following this lecture clearly brought out the fact that 
we knew virtually nothing as yet about the marine fish-ponds as a 
biological environment. It was still an open question which factors influenced 
the production of malaria-transmitting mosquitoes by the marine fish-ponds. 
Therefore Mr. VAN BREEMEN and myself resolved to collect data as to 
the sea-fish-ponds as a biological milieu, to do this as regularly as 
might be once a fortnight for a whole year, and to pay special attention 
to the factors that influence the production of malaria-bearing mosquitoes 
in those ponds. | at first cherished a secret hope that the character of the 
ponds with which I am ex officio so intimately concerned, might prove to 
be less irretrievably murderous than Mr. VAN BREEMEN contended. 
Nobody of course will be inclined to deny that the connection between 
the biology of the empangs and the endemic prevalence of malaria is a 
question of economic importance. On one hand any and every endeavour 
to raise the mass of the native population to a higher economic level, 
must undoubtedly start from the freeing of that population from the crushing 
load of various diseases, among which in the foremost place the endemic 
