" The
first of these papers begins as follows:
"The Salpae, those strange gelatinous animals, through masses of
which the voyager in the great ocean sometimes sails day after
day, have been the subject of a great controversy since the time
of the publication of the celebrated work of Chamisso, _De
Animalibus Quibusdam e Classe Vermium Linnaeana_. In this work
there were set forth, for the first time, the singular phenomena
presented by the reproductive processes of these
animals,--phenomena so strange, and so utterly unlike anything
then known to occur in the whole province of zooelogy, that
Chamisso's admirably clear and truthful account was received with
almost as much distrust as if he had announced the existence of a
veritable Peter Schlemihl."
According to Chamisso, salps appeared in two forms: solitary forms,
and forms in which a number of salps are united into a long chain.
Each salp of the aggregate form contains within it an embryo receiving
nutrition from the mother by a connection similar to the placenta by
which the embryo of a mammal receives nourishment from the blood of
the mother. These embryos grow up into the solitary form, and the
solitary form gives rise to a long chain of the aggregate form which
developes in the interior of the body.
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