CHAPTER XVI. 

 SEA SQUIRTS. 



THE other day I was down in our porth when some of the 

 fishermen of the village came in after hauling their trammels. 

 There had been a " good bit of sea " running during the night, 

 and the trammel had got fairly rilled with weed, so that it was 

 necessary to bring it ashore to clean it. If the naturalist is 

 about when this happens, he stands a chance of obtaining 

 some deep-water specimens of interest to him. My eye fell 

 upon several masses of a clear greenish-white jelly, pear- 

 shaped, and firm to the touch. I knew what they were, but 

 always anxious to get local names for natural objects where 

 they exist, I asked the fisherman what they were. " Oh, I 

 dare say you know, sir ; but we always call they congealed 

 water. Isn't that right?" I admitted that they were com- 

 posed almost entirely of water, but denied that it was con- 

 gealed. It would be better, I added, to speak of it as a living 

 leather bottle full of water and other things. 



"What was it?" 



Popularly speaking, it was a Sea Squirt. A naturalist would 

 speak of it as a simple Ascidian A. mentula, to wit; and on 

 being further pressed, might tell you that the Ascidiaceae con- 

 stitute an order of the Tunicata, which is now included among 

 Vertebrate animals, though no Tunicate possesses a back- 

 bone. 



Our description of it as a leather bottle is more to the 

 point, and equally scientific, for the naturalist who bestowed 

 the name Ascidian upon this remarkable group of animals 

 got that name from the Greek word askos % a leathern bottle. 



