The polyzoa can neither hear nor see, at least as far as we are able to ascertain, but the delicacy of their sense of touch is very great. "When left undisturbed in a glass of fresh sea-water," says Dr. Johnston,[R] "they push their tentacula beyond the mouth of the cell by straightening the body, and then expanding them in the form of a funnel or bell, they will often remain quiet and apparently immovable for a long time, presenting a very pretty and most interesting object to an observer of the 'minims of nature.' If, however, the water is agitated, they withdraw on the instant, probably by aid of the posterior ligament or muscle; the hinder part of the body is pushed aside up the cell, the whole is sunk deeper, and by this means the tentacula, gathered into a close column, are brought within the cell, the aperture of which is shut by the same series of actions. The polyzoa of the same polyzoary often protrude their thousand heads at the same time, or in quick but irregular succession, and retire simultaneously, or nearly so, but at other times I have often witnessed a few only to venture on the display of their glories, the rest remaining concealed, and if, when many are expanded, one is singled out and touched with a sharp instrument, it alone feels the injury, and retires, without any others being conscious of the danger, or of the hurt inflicted on their mate. The polyzoa propagate by gemmation and by ova or eggs, which, germinating on the inner surface, escape at a later period into the visceral cavity, and are finally discharged into the wide sea, so to fulfil their mission in creation, and people the shores of every clime with myriads of busy workers in horn and in lime, which, with subtle chemistry, they draw from a fluid quarry and build up in textures of admirable beauty and heaven-ordered designs."
[R] "History of the British Zoophytes," 2nd edit. vol. i. p. 259.
Each polyzoon begins with a single ovum. The original or seminal cell of a flustra or lepralia has no sooner fixed itself upon some stone, shell, or alga, than new buds begin to shoot forth, which in their turn produce others from their unattached margins, so as rapidly to augment the number of cells to a very large amount. Thus a common specimen of Flustra carbasea presents more than 18,000 individual polyzoa, and as each of these has about twenty-two tentacula, which are again furnished with about a hundred ciliæ a piece, the entire polyzoary presents no less than 396,000 tentacula and 39,600,000 ciliæ. The Rev. David Landsborough calculated that a specimen of Flustra membranacea five feet in length by eight inches in breadth had been the work and the habitation of above two millions of inmates, so that this single colony on a submarine island was about equal in number to the population of Scotland. As the tentacula are numerous in this species, four thousand millions of ciliæ must have provided for its wants, about four times the number of the inhabitants of this globe!
Clavellina producta. Group of two adult and several young individuals, magnified about five times.
c. Branchial orifice. e. Branchiæ.
i. Anal orifice. l. Stomach.
o. Heart. u, u′, u″. Reproductive
buds, springing from the abdomen of the adults.
Ascidia mammillata.
a. Branchial orifice, open. b. Anal orifice, closed.
The Tunicata are so called because their soft parts are not enclosed in a calcified shell such as invests the majority of their class, but in a more or less coriaceous envelope or tunic which is either bag-shaped, and provided with two apertures, or tube-shaped, and open at the ends. They present a strong resemblance to the Polyzoa, not merely in their general plan of conformation, but also in their tendency to produce composite structures by gemmation; they may, however, be at once distinguished from them by the absence of the ciliated tentacula which form so conspicuous a feature in the external aspect of a flustra or a retepore. Their branchiæ, which have generally the form of ridges (e), occupy a large sac, forming, as it were, the antechamber of the alimentary canal, which is barely distinguishable into gullet, stomach, and intestine, and always convoluted or folded once on itself. The Tunicata are exclusively marine, and widely spread from the arctic to the tropical seas. All of them are free during the earlier parts of their existence; some remain permanently so (Pyrosomidæ, Salpæ), but the generality (Ascidiæ, Botrylli) become fixed to shells and other marine bodies; some exist as distinct individuals (Ascidiæ, Cynthia), whilst various degrees of combination are effected by others (Botryllus, Clavellina, Pyrosoma), and some are simple in one generation and combined in the next (Salpæ).