272 BULLETIN 82, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Siboga station 274; off the northeastern coast of the Aru Islands (lat. 528'12" S., 

 long. 13453'54" E.); 57 meters; sand, shells, and stones; December 26, 1899 [A. H. 

 Clark, 1918] (2, Amsterdam Mus.). 



Aru Islands; Dr. H. Merton's station 1 ; west of Ngaiguli; 14 meters; coarse yellow 

 sand; February 18, 1908 [Reichensperger, 1913). 



Biliton, Sunda Islands; M. Korotnev, 1885 [Koehler, 1895; A. H. Clark, 1912 (as 

 Sunda Islands)]. 



Investigator; Pocock Island, southeast of Cape Price, the northernmost point of 

 Great Andaman Island (lat. 1333'40" N., long. 9300'30" E.); 36 meters [A. H. 

 Clark, 1912] (1, I. M.). 



?South Nilandu, Maldive archipelago ; 38 meters [Bell, 1902]. 



Erroneous locality. Mergui Archipelago [A. H. Clark, 1911]. This is an error for 

 Andaman Islands. 



Geographical range.- From the Philippine Islands southward to Australia, reach- 

 ing Double Island Point, Queensland, and Cape Jaubert, Western Australia, and west- 

 ward to the Andaman Islands, and possibly to the Maldive archipelago. 



Bathymetrical range.- From the shoreline down to 111 meters. The average of 

 21 records for which a definite depth is given is 35 meters. 



History. Prof. Ludwig von Graff in 1877 recorded some myzostomes from a 

 comatulid from Bohol in the Philippines, which had been given the manuscript name 

 of Comatula dubia by Prof. Carl Semper, who had collected it a few years before. 

 What this Comatula dubia was is not at all clear. Prof, von Graff referred to it again 

 as Antedon dubia hi 1884, and Carpenter later used the name Antedon dubia 

 for the present species as will appear below. Previously, therefore, I have assumed 

 that Semper's Antedon dubia was the same as Carpenter's Antedon dubia. But as 

 Carpenter never mentioned the former, did not include the Philippines among the 

 localities from which the species under consideration was known to him, and gave 

 the Aru Islands as the only locality for the form which he called Antedon dubia, I now 

 believe that the dubia of Semper and the dubia of Carpenter must have been two differ- 

 ent species and that the former should not be included in the synonymy of the present 

 species, but instead should be placed in the list of unidentifiable forms. Semper's 

 dubia is mentioned here, however, because it has so long been, on what I now believe 

 to have been quite insufficient grounds, included in the synonymy of this species. 



The present species was first described by Dr. P. H. Carpenter under the name of 

 Antedon crenulata on September 26, 1882, his description having been based upon some 

 dried fragments he had studied in the Hamburg Museum. 



Five days after this, on October 1, 1882, Prof. F. Jeffrey Bell published specific 

 formulas for two new species which he called Antedon decipiens and Antedon irregularis, 

 but he gave no indication of their habitat or of their origin. 



In the report upon the collections of H. M. S. Alert published in 1884 Professor 

 Bell described and figured Antedon decipiens from specimens secured in the Arafura 

 Sea (32-36 fathoms), Dundas Strait, and Prince of Wales Channel. He provisionally 

 associated with this species, as a variety, two specimens that had been dredged at 

 station 144, identified some pages farther on (page 167) in a footnote under Actinometra 

 robusta as probably Thursday Island. Antedon decipiens, he said, presents some resem- 

 blances to Carpenter's Antedon pinniformis. In the Alert report he also described 



