34 BULLETIN 82, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



meridionalis (Comactinia meridionalis), from the American coast of the Atlantic, 

 though it has subsequently been found that Muller's Alecto echinoptera is also an 

 American form. 



In 1866 Willielm Bohlsche described as new a curious little comatulid from 

 the coast of Brazil \vhich he had been unable to identify with any known form. He 

 called it, in compliment to the justly famous Norwegian naturalist of that name, 

 Antedon diibenii. This species has been the cause of considerable confusion; P. H. 

 Carpenter identified with it a specimen which the Challenger dredged at Bahia, and 

 figured both this specimen and the type in the Challenger report on the "Cornatulse." 

 The Challenger specimen is a young example of Tropiometra picta, but the type 

 specimen obviously belongs to the Antedonidse, and to the genus Antedon. It is 

 only within the past year that this species has been rediscovered, the second known 

 specimen having been collected on the island of St. Thomas. 



It was in 1866 also that Prof. Sven Loven instituted the new genus Phanogenia 

 for the reception of a curious exocyclic comatulid from Singapore which differed 

 from all the other species then known in having the centrodorsal very much reduced, 

 in fact merely a small stellate plate, and quite without cirri. This form he called 

 Pnanogenia typica (Comaster typica). 



Two years afterwards (1868) Professor Lov4n announced the startling discovery 

 of a recent cystid at Cape York, Australia, which subsequently proved to be nothing 

 but the detached disk of one of the Zygometridse. This so-called Hyponome sarsii 

 of Loven was the first zygometrid known; but in the same year Prof. Carl Semper 

 introduced to science a second, the peculiar Ophiocrinus (Eudiocrinus) indivisus, 

 remarkable in possessing but 5 arms, whereas all the other comatulids then known 

 had at least 10. 



The United States Coast Survey had been for some time engaged in a systematic 

 study of the marine conditions off the coast of the southern United States, and 

 Count L. F. de Pourtales was thus enabled in 1868 to make known the interesting 

 Comatula brevipinna (Crinometra brevipinna, the first known species of the Charito- 

 metridae) and Comatula Tiagenii (Coccometra Tiagenii), the first comatulids definitely 

 known from the West Indies, C. brevipinna being, moreover, the first species known 

 with "plated ambulacra" like those of the pentacrinites, though their existence in 

 this form was not demonstrated until many years later. 



In the following year Kuhl and van Hasselt gave colored figures of two large 

 comatulids, one of which was described as new under the name of Comatula, (Acti- 

 nometra) Tiamata (Comatula solans), and Pourtales added to the known fauna of 

 the West Indies his Antedon armata (Analcidometra armata), A. cubensis (Antedon 

 cubensis and Atelecrinus balanoides), and A. rubiginosa (Comactinia meridionalis). 

 At the same time Prof. E. von Martens recorded from the Red Sea the Alecto 

 palmata of Miiller, which had originally been described from the Red Sea, and, erro- 

 neously, India, and recorded Comatula Solaris (based on a specimen of Tropiometra 

 carinata) from Zanzibar. 



Dr. C. F. Ltitken had become interested in the comatulids, and had discovered 

 that in the exocyclic species the oral pinnules are furnished with a peculiar terminal 

 comb; he retained Actinometra for the exocyclic forms and used Antedon or Alecto 



