HISTORY OF THE LANCELET. 415 



squirt, we must first consider these two remarkable animals 

 in their perfect state and compare their anatomies. 



We begin with the Lancelet, or Amphioxus, which, after 

 Man, is the most important and interesting of all Vertebrates. 

 (Cf Fig. 151, and Plate XI. Fig. 15.) The Lancelet was first 

 described in 1778 by a German naturalist, named Pallas. 

 He received this little animal from the British North Sea, 

 and, thinkino- that in this animal he recoo^nized a form 

 closely allied to tlie common Naked Snail (Limax), he gave 

 it the name of Liifnax lanceolatits. For more than half a 

 century, no one troubled himself about this reputed Naked 

 Snail. Not till 1834 was this insignificant creature observed 

 alive in the sand at Naples, by a local zoologist named 

 Costa. He asserted that it was no snail, but a diminutive 

 fish, and gave it the name of Branchiostoma luhricum. Just 

 about the same time the English naturalist, Yarrell, showed 

 that it possessed an internal axial skeleton, and called the 

 animal Amphioxus lanceolatus. Then, in 1839, it was 

 studied most closely by Johannes Miiller of Berlin, to 

 whom we are indebted for a very profound and thorough 

 dissertation upon its anatomy.^^^ Recently our knowledge 

 of the animal has been greatly extended, and its more 

 delicate structure especially has become better known.^^^ 



The Amphioxus lives in flat, sandy localities on the sea- 

 coast, partly buried in the sand, and appears to be very 

 widely distributed in various seas. It is found in the 

 North Sea (on the British and Scandinavian coasts, and 

 also in Heligoland), in various parts of the Mediterranean 

 {e.g., at Nice, Naples, Messina). It also occurs on the coast 

 of Brazil and on the distant shores of the Pacific Ocean 

 (the coast of Peru, Borneo. China, etc.). Everywhere this 

 remarkable little animal appears in the same simple form.^^ 



