26 BULLET!^ 82, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



Prof. Johannes Miiller was largely responsible for the later disregard of the 

 generic name Comatula in favor of Alecto, rehabilitated, and Actinometra, newly 

 coined; for he employed Comatula as a term to include all comatulids, and expressed 

 the finer divisions by Alecto and Actinometra, used hi a subgeneric sense. Dr. P. H. 

 Carpenter followed Miiller in this perversion of Comatula, and used the name only 

 in a sort of vernacular way, much as we now use the word "comatulid." In 

 speaking exactly he always used Eudiocrinus, Antedon, Actinometra, Atelecrinus, 

 etc., but when he merely wished to differentiate the free from the stalked forms he 

 always spoke of the former, or of any one of them (most commonly Antedon bifida, 

 which he regarded as the type of the group), as "Comatula." 



Lamarck entirely failed to recognize the affinities of the comatulids, and placed 

 them with the starfishes, though in a separate genus, as other post-Linnean authors 

 had done. 



In the year following the appearance of Lamarck's treatise on the comatulids 

 the portion of Savigny's description of Egypt dealing with the echinoderms was 

 published; in it were figured two comatulids from the Red Sea, one of which was 

 designated (the identifications being by Audouin) as "Comatula sp.," the other as 

 "Comatula multiradiata." There is no further reference to the first of these figures, 

 which represents the local species of Tropiometra; but in 1836 de Blainville copied 

 the second in the atlas to his "Manuel d'Actinologie;" in doing this he made a 

 curious mistake, for the plate is lettered "Comatula adeonse," though in the text 

 the description of Comatula adeonse is .taken from Lamarck, and the species is 

 correctly said to have 10 arms. In the year following the "Penny Encyclopedia" 

 copied de Blainville's account of Comatula adeonse, multiradiate figure and all, and 

 the same slip was made by Knight in his "Natural History," published in 1867. 



In 1819 Schweigger figured various parts of a species which he determined, 

 without doubt incorrectly, as "Comatula multiradiata;" he further identified this 

 with Leach's Alecto horrida. 



J. S. Miller, in his epoch making monograph published in 1821, again raised the 

 comatulids to a position next to the fossil crinoids, and thus brought the conception 

 of the group as a whole to the same level at which it had been left by Llhuyd 120 

 years before. Miller proposed the name Crinoidea for the class, but he only 

 mentioned one comatulid, the Rosy Feather Star (the only one with which he was 

 personally acquainted), which he had found at Milford Haven. He was unable 

 to place this species in reference to those described by Lamarck, and therefore 

 tentatively described it as new under the name of Comatula fimbriata, which 

 name Miiller in 1841 changed to miUeri owing to the conflict with the Lamarckian 

 Comatula fimbriata which is quite a different thing. Lamarck's Comatula fimbriata 

 is the species now known as Capittaster multiradiata, a species belonging to the 

 Comasteridse, while Miller's Comatula fimbriata is the common Antedon bifida, a 

 species belonging to the Antedonidse. 



In 1822 we find the first reference to a comatulid in American zoological litera- 

 ture, Prof. S. L. Mitchill recording two specimens, which he did not identify, from 

 Gaspar Strait. In 1825 Mr. Titian Peale found on the beach at Great Egg Harbor, 

 New Jersey, a specimen which he sent to the Museum of the Philadelphia Academy; 



