120 BULLETIN 82, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



ovaries had been correctly described six years previously both by J. V. Thompson 

 and by Dujardin, he identified as the ovaries the sacculi. 



De Koninck and Le Hon, in their remarkable work upon the crinoids of the 

 Belgian carboniferous published in 1854, included some observations made by 

 Duchassaing at Guadeloupe on the structure of the disk of Isocrinus decorus (erro- 

 neously identified as " Pentacrinus mulleri," i. e., Endoxocrinus parrse), andmen- 

 tioned that the remains of small Crustacea had been found in its stomach. This 

 is the first mention of the disk of a recent pentacrinite, the specimens heretofoie 

 described having been devoid of "soft parts." 



In 1863 Prof. George Allman described in detail a single specimen of Antedon 

 bifida in the " prebrachial " or "cystid" stage which he had obtained on the coast 

 of South Devon, while two years later Prof. C. Wyville Thomson published his 

 exhaustive account of the development and larval anatomy of the same species; 

 this was followed in 1866 by Prof. William Benjamin Carpenter's most excellent 

 memoir upon the later stages and upon the adult. In 1866 also Prof. Sven Loven 

 described, in a comparative way, a peculiar comasterid, Phanogenia typica (Co- 

 master typica) in which the centrodorsal is without cirri and is reduced to a small 

 stellate plate lying in the center of the radial pentagon, a condition heretofore 

 unknown. 



Two years later Prof. Michael Sars published his well-known memoir on Rhizo- 

 crinus lofotensis, to which he appended an exhaustive account of the pentacrinoid 

 ybung of Haihrometra sarsii; and Prof. Edmond Perrier took up the study of the 

 comatulids, particularly of Antedon bifida and A. moroccana, publishing in 1872 

 the fiist of a notable series of contributions which culminated in the later eighties 

 in a magnificent monograph treating in the greatest detail of the anatomy and 

 developmental history. 



Prof. Elias Metschnikoff in 1871 published an interesting and instructive paper 

 upon certain points in the development of Antedon mediterranea, while Grimm in 

 1872 gave an account of the finer structure of the same species, and Baudelot con- 

 sidered the axial cords. 



In 1876 there appeared a remarkable series of papers by Teuscher, Ludwig, 

 Semper, Gotte and the two Carpenters, dealing with various points in comatulid 

 anatomy, especially with the anatomy of the arms and with the early developmental 

 stages. P. H. Carpenter's memoir on the brachial anatomy of crinoids dealt largely 

 with the species of Comasteridse, especially with Comanthus parvicirra, and was 

 prepared under the guidance of Professor Semper, being based upon material col- 

 lected by Semper himself in the Philippine archipelago. In this paper the first 

 mention is made of the curious modification often found in the posterior arm clus- 

 ters among the comasterids resulting in the loss of the ambulacral grooves, the 

 tentacles, and the subepithelial nerve band; and the occurrence is noted in the arm 

 of curious bodies, tentatively supposed to be sense organs, called spherodes. The 

 genital cord is found also to give rise to eggs within the arm itself instead of only 

 within the pinnules as in Antedon, an observation later found to be equally appli- 

 cable to the pentacrinites. ' 



