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To the great astonishment of zoologists, they were found, in their whole individual development, to be closely related to the vertebrates. When fully developed the Ascidiae are shapeless lumps that would not, at first sight, be taken for animals at all.
The oval body, frequently studded with knobs or uneven and lumpy, in which we can discover no special external organs, is attached at one end to marine plants, rocks, or the floor of the sea. Many species look like potatoes, others like melon-cacti, others like prunes. Many of the Ascidiae form transparent crusts or deposits on stones and marine plants.
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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