Mr. R. Kirkpatrick on Oculinavia australis. 405 



clue wliatevcr liaJ been given concin-ning (lie essential 

 features. 



In 1905, (luring the Hamburg Soutii-west Australian 

 Expedition, Haitmejer and Micliaelsen collected near 

 Fremantle a number of specimens which appeared to have 

 all the characters of Oculinaria auftralis. The specimens 

 bad been cast ashore after a storm, and evidently had been 

 torn up from the sea-botlom. A curious fact now became 

 revealed, viz., that elongated digitifonn examples possessed 

 not an imaginary axis, but a solid one formed by a filament 

 of alga. 



In 1918 Hartmeyer published a short preliminary account 

 of the Ascidian *, giving a description of the internal 

 anatomy. 



The genus has certain unique characters, which readily 

 distinguish it from all the other members of the subfamily 

 Polyzoinge — for Oculinaria alone has four folds in the 

 branchial ?ac, all the rest of the genera of Polyzoinse having 

 less than four. Further, the gonads are on one side only, 

 viz., on the right side. 



To return to the missing type-i=!peciinon. When, in 1895, 

 the writer was entrusted by Mr. E. A. Smith with the ciiarge 

 of the British Museum collection of Tunicata, he made a 

 manuscript catalogue. A prolonged but futile search was 

 made for the ty{)e-specimen of Oculinaria australis, firstly 

 among the Tunicata and less thoroughly among the 

 Anthozoa. 



Recently Mr. A. K. Totton has had a preliminary card- 

 index made of the Anthozoa, and the writer a^ked him if by 

 any chance the name Oculinaria had been entered. Happily 

 the name was found, and presently the long-lost type was 

 produced. Probably the specimen had been misplaced at the 

 time of the removal of the Natural History collections from 

 Bloomsbury to South Kensington in 1880. It was not 

 surprising the writer had overlooked the specimen in 1895. 

 Not only had it been placed amongst an alien group in a high 

 dark cupboard, but the original description was incorrect and 

 misleading — j)iobably owing to a printer's error. For Gray 

 records the diameter as 1^ inch (33 mm.), but the correct 

 figure should be less than ^ inch (12 mm.). Hartmeyer had 

 already arrived at the conclusion that a mistake had been 

 made here. The length is 8 inches, but the slender specimen 

 had been doubled up and pressed into a small bottle less than 



* " Eiue -wicdergefuudene Ascidie," SB. Ges. uaturf. Berlin, 1918, 

 110. 10, p. 385. 



