THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
VoL. xıv.— JANUARY, 1880. — No. i. 
OBSERVATIONS UPON THE HABITS, STRUCTURE 
AND DEVELOPMENT pg AMPHIOXUS LANCE- 
OLA FUS: 
BY HENRY J. RICE. 
REVIOUS to last season, specimens ofthat very curious fish- 
like animal, Amphioxus lanceolatus Yarrell, had been dis- 
-covered along the eastern coast of the United States only in 
Florida and North Carolina, and one specimen, according to Mr. 
P. R. Uhler, president of the Maryland Academy of Science, upon 
the Eastern Shore of Virginia. -While engaged in laboratory 
work at the Chesapeake Zoological Laboratory, at Fort Wool, 
last summer (1878), I was fortunate enough to obtain possession — 
of three adults—two males and a ripe female—and twenty speci- 
mens of the young of this very interesting species, thus making 
Fort Wool not only a new locality for the adult animal, but, 
so far as I am aware, the only place in America where the yeno = 
have ever been captured. 
Of these specimens the adults were taken with the dredge b : 
the bottom of the bay, south and east of the fort, in a depth « of JA 
water of from twelve to fifteen feet, and the young were secured ae 
by surface dredging with small hand-nets of bolting cloth, fom 
around the wharf, and near the steps of the boat-landing, 
While they remained alive, which was during the greater part of 
the months of July and August, I had the opportunity of making 
a very interesting series of observation, in regard to their habits, 
and those peculiarities of structure and development which have- 
drawn so much attention to this animal, and rank it as at least the : 
lowest of vertebrates, if not an intermediate type between Verte- _ a 
brata and Invertebrata. These investigations, the results of which a 
VCL. XIV.—NO. I. 
