IX. — The Ascidians of the Bermuda Islands. 

 By Wileard G. Van Name, Ph.D. 



In preparing the account of the Bermuda ascidians which is pre- 

 sented in the following pages, the writer has hoped that it would 

 not be of local interest only. The waters about these islands are 

 remarkably rich in animals of this class, including many new species 

 and several new genera, and the Tunicata of the part of the world 

 in which the Bermuda Islands are situated are only slightly known. 



The species which have been described from the Atlantic coast of 

 North America are for the most part northern forms, from the 

 British Provinces and the New England States. Concerning those 

 of the Southern States but little is recorded. A large number of 

 species of Simple Ascidians from the West Indies and the adjacent 

 parts of tropical America have been described in the works of 

 Heller (4, 5), Traustedt (16), and Sluiter (15), though these writers 

 had only preserved, and often very insufficient, material as a basis 

 for their descriptions and figures. Only one of these writers 

 (Sluiter) describes any Compound Ascidians from this region, and 

 he describes only a very few. 



Our knowledge in regard to the Tunicata of the Bermuda Islands 

 themselves w r as until very recently confined to the six species 

 obtained there by the Challenger Expedition, and described by 

 Herdman (6) in the reports of that voyage. 



In the spring of 1898, Prof. A. E. Verrill, of Yale University, 

 and a party of students under his direction, made a general collec- 

 tion of the invertebrates of the Bermuda Islands, and among them 

 a considerable number of ascidians were obtained, though particular 

 attention was not directed to this class of animals. But few Simple 

 Ascidians were comprised in this collection. Most of these were 

 described by Prof. Verrill in these Transactions (Vol. x, 1900), as 

 well as one new Compound Ascidian. He also mentioned four genera 

 of the latter which had not been previously recorded from there, 

 though he did not describe or identify the species. 



Prof. Verrill has turned over to the writer the entire collection of 

 Tunicata obtained by that expedition, and this paper is in part the 

 result of a study of those specimens. In the spring of 1901, Prof. 

 Verrill and Mr. A. Hyatt Verrill made another trip to Bermuda and 

 obtained an even larger collection of Tunicata than in 1898, and the 



