MONOGRAPH OF THE EXISTING CEINOIDS. 27 



there it was studied by Thomas Say who, however, could not identify it with any of 

 the species then known, so he described it as new, calling it (emending Leach's 

 generic name) Alectro dentata. Say's species has never been properly understood; 

 it has been very generally confused with Alecto sarsii, later described, and with the 

 Asterias tenella of Rctzius which also came from America, but from farther north, 

 although it is in reality perfectly distinct from both. It is probable that up to the 

 present time no one has been able to make direct comparisons between these three 

 forms, for certainly Carpenter, had he done so, could never, as he did, have called 

 them identical. 



About this time (but just when I have been unable to ascertain) W. E. Leach 

 described the common and magnificent arctic species, from specimens brought from 

 Spitzbergen, as Alecto (i. e., Heliometra) glacialis. 



In 1826 Risso published his Comatula coralina and C. annulata (both synonyms 

 of Lamarck's Comatula mediterranea) , basing them upon specimens obtained at 

 Nice; and in the same year J. E. Gray published a paper on the digestive system of 

 the comatulids in which he proposed uniting them with the so-called Crinoidea of 

 Miller under the family name of Encrinitidse; in other words proposing Encrinitidae 

 (or Encrinidas) as a synonym of Miller's Crinoidea. 



The year 1827 was a memorable one in the history of the comatulids, for in 

 that year Dr. John Yaughan Thompson discovered in the Cove of Cork in Ireland 

 a small organism which he at once recognized as a crinoid and described in detail 

 in his classical memoir on the ''Pentacrinus europseus.'' In the following year 

 Fleming became impressed with the differences between this small species and the 

 larger pentacrinites, and proposed for it the new generic name Hibernula, this 

 being rejected two years later by do Blainville who, considering that the names of 

 all stalked crinoids should end in "-crinus," rechristencd it PJiytocrinus. But 

 Thompson had not been satisfied with the mere discovery of this interesting animal; 

 he made it the object of careful study, and in 1835 he announced that it was nothing 

 more nor less than the young of the common comatulid, Antedon bifida. 



Fleming in 1828 suggested the recognition of two species of British comatu- 

 lids, as had been done by Pennant, but for them he resurrected the long-forgotten 

 names of Linck, calling them Comatula rosacea and C. barbata. The former was 

 quickly adopted, both because of its eminent appropriateness and because of the 

 great and deserved prestige of its author, and had become firmly fixed in the 

 nomenclature before growing sentiment in favor of a more stringent adherence 

 to the principle of adopting the works of Linne' as the starting point in all zoolog- 

 ical nomenclature finally dislodged it. Some sacrifice must of necessity be made 

 to secure nomenclatorial uniformity, but we can not help regretting the rejection 

 of the appropriate names conferred upon the sea stars by such a master of the 

 subject as Linck in favor of the attenuated and often questionable nomenclatorial 

 resultants obtained by the analysis of the unwieldy composites created by his 

 less discriminating successor. At the same time Fleming proposed the family 

 Comatuladas for the comatulids, together with the Pentacrinus europseus of Thomp- 

 son, and he suggested a division of the family, one part to contain certain forms 

 having the digestive apparatus with two apertures (as Gray had shown to be the 



