FABULOUS STORY. 141 



histories and traditions of the island, and it is pro- 

 bable that many long-forgotten families of Hindoo, 

 or still more ancient religions, have mingled their 

 ashes in its grave-yards. 



The inscriptions and ornamental carvings on some 

 of even the more recent tombs, were of by no means 

 contemptible execution or design, and the whole 

 was a far more interesting place than I expected, 

 and, as well as the tombs on the hill, well worth 

 visiting, and a more detailed examination than we 

 had time to afford them. 



From the grave- yards we adjourned to the house 

 of the Assistant-resident, where I need hardly add, 

 we were regaled with a most sumptuous breakfast. 

 The Resident, M. Pietermatz, had told me of a sin- 

 gular story current among the Javanese, and appa- 

 rently not wholly discredited by some of the Euro- 

 peans, of a bird that springs from the animal inha- 

 biting a certain bivalve shell. A Dutch surgeon in 

 Gresik had preserved some of these molluscs in 

 spirits, and on the jar being sent for, I found they 

 were large-sized acephalous molluscs, with a strong, 

 dark hairy byssus, but from want of the shell I could 

 not make out exactly to what genus it belonged. It 

 was probably either a large mytilus, a meleagrina, 

 or a pinna, and was certainly not a lepas. It is 

 curious to see the same superstitious idea attached 

 to the inhabitant of a shell in Java, as was once cur- 

 rent in Europe with regard to the Bernacle Goose 

 springing from the shell of the barnacle, or lepas 



