14 THE AMERICAN ARBACIA 



better to seething and to defying (i.e., digesting) than other... Also 

 Urchins have a Httle body and many pikes" (this is, of course, the sea 

 urchin). This is from the EngHsh translation of J. Trevisa (1398) from 

 Seager's Natural History in Shakespeare's Time (1896). 



Chaucer (1340?- 1400) refers to sea urchins in his Boethius: "Sharpe 

 fishes that highten echines" (Skeat ed., 1897, Bk. Ill, Meter VIII). 



C. RONDELET TO LOUIS AgASSIZ 



Rondelet (i 507-1 566) is probably the first writer after Pliny to give a 

 description of the sea urchin all of which was not taken directly from 

 Aristotle and Pliny. It is said that his figure (1554) of a sea urchin cut 

 across "so that it may be observed better" is the earliest figure of a 

 dissected invertebrate (see Singer, 1931, p. 95) (Fig. 4). He also de- 

 scribes the dental structure which, he says, was compared to a lantern 

 by Aristotle; and he remarks that "there is nothing in the whole sea 

 more elegant and pleasing to look at." 



Belon (1553) added nothing to Aristotle's account. Gesner (1558, 

 1563) and Aldrovandi (1606) have for the most part repeated Ronde- 

 let's description and reproduced his figure of a dissected sea urchin. 



Descriptions and classification of sea urchins made some progress 

 through Rumphius (1705), Breynius (1732), and Klein (1734). The 

 accepted binomial classification dates from Linneus (1758), though 

 he grouped all the Echinoids under one genus, Echinus, in which he 

 included 17 species; Klein had divided them into 24 genera and 60 

 species. Leske (1778) reintroduced Klein's classification, using the 

 binomial nomenclature. Lamarck in 1816 described the species Echinus 

 punctulatus, which Gray in 1835 changed to a new genus Arbacia punct- 

 ulata. Both Lamarck (18 16) and Cuvier (181 7) and many later writers 

 included the Echinoderms among the Radiata together with Coelen- 

 terates. Infusoria, etc. The term Echinodermata originated with Klein 

 (1734) to include only the Echinoidea ; then the Asteroidea were added 

 (by Bruguieres 1789) and then the Holothuroidea and Crinoidea (by 

 Lamarck 1816); see Cuvier (1834, p. 537). The Echinodermata were 

 established as a primary division of the animal kingdom by Leuckart 

 in 1848. But, though this classification was generally accepted, L. Agas- 

 siz in his Essay on Classification (1857, p. 71) still maintained that "the 

 undivided type of Radiata appears to me as one of the most natural 

 branches of the animal kingdom, and I consider its subdivision into 

 Coelenterata and Echinodermata as an exaggeration of the anatomical 

 differences between them." 



