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Up to this there is no definite ground in the embryology of the Ascidiae for bringing them into close relationship with the Vertebrates; the same gastrula is formed in the same way in many other animals of different stems. But we now find an embryonic process that is peculiar to the Vertebrates, and that proves irrefragably the affinity of the Ascidiae to the Vertebrates.
Of the other chief organs we have still to mention the sexual glands, which lie right behind in the body-cavity. All the Ascidiae are hermaphrodites. Each individual has a male and a female gland, and so is able to fertilise itself. Fertilisation is accomplished here, and in many of the Ascidiae developed embryos are found.
Almost all the leaves, excepting those that float on the surface, are so thickly incrusted with corallines as to be of a white colour. We find exquisitely delicate structures, some inhabited by simple hydra-like polypi, others by more organised kinds, and beautiful compound Ascidiae. On the leaves, also, various patelliform shells, Trochi, uncovered molluscs, and some bivalves are attached.
We cannot say that the vertebrates are descended from the Ascidiae and still less the reverse but we can say that of all the invertebrates it is the Tunicates, and, within this group, the Ascidiae, that are the nearest blood-relatives of the ancient stem-form of the vertebrates.
The bulk of the Ascidiae are very small, at the most a few inches long. A few species are a foot or more in length. There are many species of them, and they are found in every sea. As in the case of the Acrania, we have no fossilised remains of the class, because they have no hard and fossilisable parts. However, they must be of great antiquity, and must go back to the primordial epoch.
The discovery was confirmed by other zoologists, and there can no longer be any doubt that of all the classes of invertebrates that of the Tunicates is most closely related to the vertebrates, and of the Tunicates the nearest are the Ascidiae.
It was a fortunate accident that Kowalevsky first examined just those larger specimens of the Ascidiae that show most clearly the relationship of the vertebrates to the invertebrates, and the larvae of which behave exactly like those of the Amphioxus in the first stages of development.
Almost all the leaves, excepting those that float on the surface, are so thickly incrusted with corallines as to be of a white colour. We find exquisitely delicate structures, some inhabited by simple hydra-like polypi, others by more organized kinds, and beautiful compound Ascidiae. On the leaves, also, various patelliform shells, Trochi, uncovered molluscs, and some bivalves are attached.
These pass with the water into the gill-crate and the digestive part of the gut at the end of it, at first into an enlargement of it that represents the stomach. The outlet is sometimes called the branchial pore, and sometimes the cloaca or ejection-aperture. In many of the Ascidiae a glandular mass opens into the gut, and this represents the liver.
In Chiloe, where the kelp does not thrive very well, the numerous shells, corallines, and crustacea are absent; but there yet remain a few of the Flustraceae, and some compound Ascidiae; the latter, however, are of different species from those in Tierra del Fuego; we see here the fucus possessing a wider range than the animals which use it as an abode.
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