36 BULLETIN 82, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



the Challenger crinoids, and from those collected by the Blake in the West Indies. 

 The names included in these later reports (two on the Challenger and one on the 

 Blake material) were furnished by P. H. Carpenter; but some of them were subse- 

 quently dropped by Carpenter, and others were never mentioned by him at all, so 

 that they now stand in von Graff's works as nomina nuda. 



In 1878 Pourtales, continuing his studies, described Antedon alata (Neocomatella 

 alata), A. pulchella (Neocomatella alata), and A. granulifera (Crinometra granulifera). 



Owing to the great difficulty which he must have had in comprehending the 

 vague descriptions of the early authors, and to a lack of the true appreciation of the 

 somewhat intricate differential specific characters of the group, as well as to the 

 almost complete absence of material with which to make comparisons, we find the 

 diagnoses of Pourtales somewhat difficult to comprehend, the more so as many of 

 them are short and indefinite; the absence of authentic type-specimens, and a trans- 

 ference of certain of his original labels to species not agreeing with his diagnoses 

 have added to the confusion. Carpenter attempted to straighten matters out in 

 1881, but in some ways made things rather worse. Antedon granulifera Carpenter 

 at first decided was an " Actinometra" ; later (1888) he shifted the name to a species 

 (Crinometra imbricata) resembling Crinometra brevipinna but entirely lacking the 

 peculiar granulated ornamentation which induced Pourtales to bestow the name 

 granulifera upon it, and renamed Antedon pourtalesii what is most probably the type 

 of granulifera. Carpenter's action in regard to Antedon alata and A. pulchella was 

 extremely arbitrary; he saw that the two were synonyms, but, instead of choosing 

 the first name given (alata), he chose the later (pulchella) as being more appropriate. 



In 1879 Dr. Edgar A. Smith described in great detail a new comatulid from the 

 island of Rodriguez, which remains to-day the only crinoid known from that locality ; 

 he called it Comatula indica (Stephanometra indica) and it was the first species to be 

 discovered belonging to the family Stephanometridse. In the same year Dr. Richard 

 Rathbun published the results of his study of the Brazilian comatulids, carefully 

 comparing Brazilian and African specimens of the corresponding species of Tropio- 

 metra, and describing in detail, though conscientiously refraining from naming, 

 another species from Brazil which has since proved to be the interesting Nemaster 

 lineata. 



The year 1879 marked the beginning of a new epoch in the study of the comatu- 

 lids, for in that year was published Philip Herbert Carpenter's masterly monograph 

 on the genus " Actinometra," which is, in many ways, the best work he ever did, and 

 which is free from a number of the more serious errors which mar the Chal- 

 lenger report published nine years later. In this work he reviews the whole subject 

 of the cornatulids and gives a detailed account of the comparative structure of such 

 species as were available. One new species, Actinometra polymorpha, is described, 

 which, however, he soon found to be the same as the Alecto parvicirra of Muller. 



In the same year Carpenter published a preliminary account of the cornatulids 

 which had been collected by the Challenger, in which he diagnosed the remarkable 

 new genus Promachocrinus which has 10 radials instead of the usual 5. 



In 1881 Carpenter followed this with a similar report on the collections of the 

 United States Coast Survey steamer Blake, in which he gave us an idea of the fauna 



