BOTRYLLID^. 9 



together in systems, systems combined into masses. Each 

 member of the commonwealth has its own pecuHar duties, 

 but shares also in operations which relate to the interest 

 and well-being- of the mass. Anatomical investigation 

 shews us the details of these curious structures and arrange- 

 ments, beautiful as wise. Indeed, few bodies among the 

 lower forms of animal life exhibit such exquisite and kaliedo- 

 scopic figures as those which we see displayed in the combi- 

 nations of the compound Ascidians. 



The merit of first understanding and interpreting the true 

 nature of these curious bodies is due to Jules Cesar Savigny, 

 an illustrious French naturalist, whose zeal in the cause of 

 minute investigation eventually deprived him of sight, and 

 the world of many profound and philosophical researches. 

 Savigny carried on his enquiries chiefly in Egypt, when a 

 member of the band of philosophers, whom Napoleon, anxious 

 to palliate the crime of conquest by extending, through their 

 aid, the realms of knowledge, gathered around him in the 

 land of the Pharaohs. The account of Savigny's researches 

 among the Tunicata is contained in his celebrated " Me- 

 moires sur les Animaux sans Vertebres," to which the 

 author might well, indeed, prefix his motto of " Patientia." 

 Two parts only of that laborious work appeared, though more 

 were promised to be issued at irregular intervals ; " for," 

 wrote the noble-spirited naturalist, " obligations too imperious 

 paralyse the faculties, and seem to alter the will itself. If 

 good observations are the fruit of patience, they are also 

 that of full and entire liberty. Ve7iena servifus, libertas 

 pomar Alas ! the sad catastrophe already mentioned pre- 

 vented the realisation of the many labours he had planned. 



Before Savigny\s time the Botryllidee had been con- 

 founded with polypes, and regarded as forms of the genus 

 Alcyonium, to which, indeed, the masses bore a striking- 

 resemblance. The earliest distinct figures of these forms ap- 

 peared in the "Philosophical Transactions" for l7o7, where 

 they were published by Schlosser ; and in l7o8, that curious 

 observer, Borlase, gave descriptions sufficiently graphic, and 

 rude but unmistakeable figures of several species, in his 



VOL. I. c 



