SUNIER: Marine fish-ponds of Batavia. 221 
DABRY DE THIERSANT (©) relates that the information contained in 
his article on Java was furnished to him by Mr. VAN GORKOM “fonction- 
naire chargé de la culture des Cinchona à Bandaeng” (sic) “(Java)”. 
That Mr. VAN GORKOM drew his data in his turn from VAN SPALL’s 
article (3) appears from the figures mentioned by DABRY DE THIERSANT (®). 
However, I cannot tell how DABRY DE THIERSANT (©) came by the 
names Salvinia and Pistia, naturally not mentioned by VAN SPALL ()- 
Both names in fact have been very properly marked with notes of 
interrogation, which accords well with the fact that the plants designated 
by those names do not occur in marine ponds, or more generally 
speaking in brackish water; at least they have so far not been met 
with !). 
As regards the afore-quoted passage from DE JAAGER and VAN LAWICK 
VAN PABST (!7), it is very probable in connection with what VAN KAMPEN (?°) 
says, that the definition given in it of “klèkap” is not quite correct. VAN 
KAMPEN (2%) says expressly that “klèkap” is the same thing as “tay-ayer”. 
Therefore “klékap” most probably does not, or at least does not in the 
first place consist of “partly decayed water plants”, but of the “tay-ayer” 
organisms described in Chapter IV (Schizophyceae, such as Oscillatoria, 
Lyngbya, Nostoc etc. and Diatoms like Pleurosigma etc.). 
That VAN KAMPEN (%) is right in this is also highly probable in 
connection with the following. In the draining of the ponds so as to lay 
the bottom dry (a. o. to promote the development of the tay-ayer or- 
ganisms) after a few days the upper layer of that bottom held together by 
the tay-ayer organisms begins to crack and scale off in flakes. This is a 
well-known phenomenon regularly to be observed in the marine pond 
district.. Now the Javanese name “kl&kap’” which ought properly to be 
written “nglékap” or still better “nglékép”, as a matter of fact design- 
ates this scaling off of the upper layer of the bottom. 
Further “ganggeng” is not duck-weed. As I pointed out in Chapter IV, 
at Batavia (a.o.) Najas falciculata R. BR. is called “ganggang”. Perhaps 
the fault lies with the Javanese dictionary, for in JANSZ’ (°°) the translation 
of the Javanese “ganggeng” is found as: a long sort of duck-weed (“kroos”), 
a trailing water-plant. 
It may further be assumed as a well-known fact that no “moss” 
grows on the bottom of marine fish-ponds. Yet not only DE JAAGER and 
VAN LAWICK VAN PABST (!7) speak of “moss”, but also VAN SPALL (5) 
calls “lumut” (i.e. algae) “a green, vegetable accretion of the soil, 
belonging to the moss-species’’ 2). In view of the preceding it appears 
to me very probable that “by moss and duck-weed” DE JAAGER and VAN 
') Mr. C. A. BACKER, botanist for the Java-flora informed me that Salvinia 
is distinctly halophobous, and that if Pistia should occur in water still containing some 
salt, a quantity of salt was bound to be minimal. 
Also in JANSZ’ Dictionary (%) the translation found for “lumut” is: fine 
moss, accretion, green coating, weed, duck-weed, coral-moss. 
