I. INTRODUCTION. 



At the seventh annual meeting of the American Morphological Society held in 

 Boston and Cambridge in December, 1896, I presented a brief paper on a new ascidian 

 from the coast of California. As my primary aim there was to treat of a few points 

 in the embryology of the animal, I left it nameless and located it in a general way 

 only among its congeners. A short synopsis of this paper was printed in " Science " 

 of the following twelfth of March (Hitter, '97). 



I take the present opportunity to make known in greater detail the anatomy 

 and relationships of this new form. 



The conspicuous place which it will have to be accorded among ascidians makes 

 it not unworthy to bear the name of the most distinguished contemporary authority 

 on this group of animals. It consequently affords me great pleasure to honor the 

 new genus to which it belongs with the name Herdmania * after my esteemed friend 

 Professor W. A. Herdman of University College, Liverpool, England. This genus, 

 as will be at once recognized by ascidiologists, must stand as the type of a new family, 

 the Herdmaniidge, the characterization of which follows. 



II. HERDMANIIDGE, fam. nov. 



1. General Character of the Colony. Composed of crowded but entirely free 

 zooids arising by budding from short, much-branched, closely interwoven stolons 

 (PL XVIII, Fig. 1). 



2. General Character of the Zooids. Large, long, and narrow body consisting 

 of three regions, namely, thoracic, digestive, and cardiogenital; these, however, not 

 constricted off from one another superficially (Figs. 1, 2). 



Siphons. Both six-lobed, the lobes of the branchial of unequal size (Fig. 4). 

 Tentacles. Branchial numerous, simple, circle interrupted; atrial not present 

 (Fig. 5). 



* Metcalf (:00) proposed the name Herdmania for a supposed new genus of Molgulidx. Before, however, his 

 paper was published he discovered that the new form belonged to Traustedt's genus Bostrichobranchus. He 

 consequently withdrew the name (:00, p. 583), although it was too late to suppress it in some of the earlier pages 

 of his paper. 



L 239 



