10 BRITISH TUXICATA. 



authors, and ascertain what progress has been made 

 in determining our indigenous species up to the present 

 time.* 



[John Ray appears to have been the first English 

 naturalist who mentions a Tunicate. In his 'Historia 

 Plantarum ' (1(386), under the section " De plantis im- 

 perfectis," he describes as the Bursa marina of Bauhin. 

 the species now known as Aplidium ficus, but he does 

 not record it as British. It is, however, a British 

 species, and the first Tunicate recorded from our 

 seas, being described and figured by John Ellis, as 

 A/ci/oiiiiiiii pulmonis instar lobattnn, in his 'Natural 

 History of the Corallines' (1755), from specimens 

 found at Whitstable, on the Kentish coast.] 



The next recordt of a British Tunicate is met with 

 in the ' Philosophical Transactions' for 1756; a 

 Botryllus [found near the Lizard Point] is there de- 

 scribed by Dr. Schlosser, and Ellis named it Alcyonimn 

 carnosum. 



Borlase afterwards described the same species in his 

 ' Natural History of Cornwall,' dated 1758, and it was 

 in 1766 named Al<-//<n/hnu Schlosseri by Pallas in his 

 ' Elenchus Zoophytorum.' [Borlase also described and 

 figured an allied species which Turton, in 1807, named 

 Alrinnilirni BorlasiiJ] 



In his 'Spicilegia Zoologica' [1774] Pallas describes 

 four species [from the Cornish coast] on the authority 

 of Graertner, three of which are compound Ascidians ; 

 they are named Asc'ulio mamillaris, Botryllus stellatus 

 [= B. Schlosseri], />. conglomerating, and Distomus 

 variolosus. 



In Pennant's 'British Zoology,' 1777 edition, a 

 species is described and named Ascidia nixlirn ; this, 



* The autlfors carried this history up to the year 1863, leaving many blanks 

 in their MS. which they evidently intended to fill in. The editor has 

 supplied the missing 1 records and brought tip the history to 1870, that being 

 the year in which the last paper on the Tunicata by either of the authors 

 appeared. All such additions are within brackets. 



f " The first record" in the authors' MS. 



