CATALOGUE OP TUNICATA. 33 



and smaller. Meshes about square, with 6 8 stigmata, and divided by 

 a horizontal membrane. 



Dorsal lamina a smooth edged plain membrane. 



Tentacles 12 large and bushy, with 12 very much smaller between. 



Dorsal tubercle small and simply cordate in form, with both horns 

 coiled inwards. 



Locality. Port Jackson ; one specimen. 



This species is in external appearance singularly like the European 

 C. echinata, L., and at first I provisionally placed it under that name. 

 An examination of the interior showed, however, that the branchial sac 

 is of a perfectly normal character, and has not the stigmata running 

 transversely to the internal longitudinal bars, as is the case in C. echinata 

 (first pointed out by Alder in 1863). The dorsal lamina has, however, 

 a smooth edge as in British specimens of C. echinata, although that 

 species is sometimes described as having a series of dorsal languets. In 

 regard to this latter character it is curious to find that, whereas Traustedt 

 in his first paper on Simple Ascidians of Denmark, in 1880,* described 

 Cynthia echinata, L., as having a dorsal fold with a smooth edge, in his 

 later paper on the Kara Sea Ascidiansf (1886), he describes the dorsal 

 fold as long, and having its edge beset with tongue-shaped processes. 



Johan Kiaer, writing more recently (1893),+ about these same northern 

 forms, does not allude to Transtech's contradictory statements, but he 

 describes the dorsal fold as smooth edged. I think possibly Traustedt's 

 Kara Sea specimens, and also those described by Wagner may belong 

 to a species distinct from our North-Western European C. echinata, and 

 characterised by 7 or 8 branchial folds in place of 6, the processes on the 

 dorsal lamina, and 25 tentacles in place of 12. Our Australian C. 

 spinifera, then, is distinct from both of these, although to some extent it 

 combines their characters. The only other described species it comes near 

 is C. hilgendorfri, Traustedt, from Japan, which, however, has 9 folds on 

 each side, and long branchial and atrial siphons. Its stigmata are of the 

 normal type. I have, however, some specimens of a species looking 

 externally like C. echinata, which I dredged in the summer of 1897 off 

 Port Townsend in Puget Sound. These have the stigmata transverse, as 

 in C. echinata, but the branchial folds are from 8 to 9 on each side, the 

 dorsal lamina has processes on its edge, and the tentacles are about 20 in 



* Vid. Medd. Naturli. Foren Kjobenhavn, 1879-80, p. 404. 



tDijmplnia-Togtets Zoologisk-15otaniske Udbytte, p. 428. 



J Christ. Vidensk. Selsk. Forh., 1893, No. 9, p. 63. 



Die Wirbellosen des Weisseu Meeres. 



