1222 SCAXDIXAVIAX FISHES. 



Tlie Liiucc-let was first described in 1774 hv Pallas, 



wild hud received ;i specimen from the Cornish coast. 

 He took the ventral side between tlie metapleures to 

 be a creeping-disk, and therefore referred the animal 

 to the genus Limax. His iigurc was copicil in 1*1. SO, 

 among the vers moUusfjues, in the EncjidnpMte MpHio- 

 diqiie; but the Lancelet remained otherwise unknown 

 for nearh' sixty years. The species was then redis- 

 covered at no great intervals of time in four localities, 

 and was shown to l)c a tisli. Coicii found it in 1.S31 

 on the shore near Polperro, Uasch in 1838 on the 

 Norwegian coast, Costa in 1834 at Naples, and Fii. 

 SuXDEVALL and S. Lovex in the same year on the 

 Weather Islands (Hohuslan). In 1838 our figure was 

 painted liy v. WiiUinT for Fries, witli a view to a 

 description which death jirevented the latter from com- 

 pleting. The specimens collected by Fries, however, 

 came into the hands of ('. J. Sl-xdevall, his successor 

 at the Royal Museum, and Axdeks Hetzius, and sug- 

 gested the first scientific examination of the fish, an 

 undertaking which was carried out on the coast of 

 Bohusliin in Retzius's company by Johannes Muller. 

 In later times the most important contributions to our 

 knowledge of the Lancelet have come from Messina 

 and the Zoological Station at Naples. On the west 

 coast of France and the English coast the species is 

 also common enough in suitable localities, on a liottom 

 of sand and gravel, prefei-ably shell-sand, from the 

 tide-mark to a depth of some tens of fathoms. In 

 Scandinavian waters it is dispersed from Trondhjein 



Fjord (Storm) and along Southern Norway into the 

 Cattegat, where it is commonest, according to Wintiiek, 

 in a — 9 fathoms of water, but lias also been found at 

 ;i de])th of 17' „ fathoms. Tiie southern limit of its 

 known range in Scandinavia is the north of the Sound, 

 at HellebcPk in Zealand (LCtken) and on both sides 

 of Samsij, between Zealand and .lutlaiid. ( >n the coast 

 of Bohusliin it is ]jlentif'ul, according to Malm and 

 Theel, in the tine shell-sand of the eastern hai'bour 

 on Storo, one of the ^^'eather Islands, where it was 

 found first by Loven and Sundevall. Tiieel found 

 numerous s]iecimens of the Lancelet on the skerrj' of 

 P>onden, and Malm a few on Flatholm, several on GasO 

 (all tin-ee localities at the entrances of Gullmar Fjord), 

 and a few on Paternoster Skerry, north of Mar.strand. 

 The specimens collected on Bonden by Theel at the 

 end of June, 1894, were kept for some days at Kris- 

 tineberg in a glass bowl with fine sand at the bottom, 

 before being sent alive to the Royal Museum. In the 

 meantime (till the 30th of June) they had deposited 

 quantities of eggs, which had already attained or passed 

 the gastrula stage. Some days afterwards larva' l'/^ 

 mm. long were taken in the acpiarium, their stage of 

 develojnuent being that shown above in fig. 375. After- 

 wards numerous larv;e 3V2 — 5 mm. long were caught, 

 at the stages re])resented in our figures 376 and 379, 

 swimming freely in the sea at Kristineberg, close u}) 

 to the jetties on the shore, at a depth of 1 — 4 fthrns. 

 l)elow the surface. These larva- too were forwarded 

 without difficulty alive to the Royal Museum. 



