248 



conformity with the well known fact that most pelagic animals avoid 

 the strong daylight by going down in the sea, raising again to the 

 surface at night time. I would expect that samples taken by night will 

 prove larvae to occur also all over the Arabian Sea. But that remains to 

 be proved. 



Besides the material of plankton samples collected for me on various 

 cruises across the Atlantic by Messrs. Blegvad, Kramp and Fogh (comp. 

 p. 10) I have also had the opportunity of examining some other samples like- 

 wise taken on the way to and from the West Indies, kindly placed at my dis- 

 posal by Dr. Johs. Schmidt. The samples were all taken at the surface 

 by night time. The following larva? were obtained from these samples. 



1911 Blegvad Off Azores 



1911 Kramp 



1912 Fogh 



Madeira 

 Canaries 

 Madeira 

 Canaries 



1911 Kramp Virgin Isl. 



- ( Dr. Schmidt) Azores 



Sargasso Sea 

 Blegvad Off Azores 



1911 Kramp Sargasso Sea 

 1912 



1913 Fogh 

 1911 (Dr.Schmidt) 



Off Azores 



The result is seen to be in fair accordance with that previously obtained 

 from the study of the material collected by the Plankton-Expedition, viz. 

 that, while in general the Echinoderm larvae occur more numerously in the 

 coastal waters, several specimens may be found also in mid-Ocean. This 

 raises the interesting problem: how did they come there? Were they carried 

 out from the coastal waters by the currents, or did they rise from the 

 bottom? 



So long as we do not know the parental origin of the larvae found in the 

 open sea the question cannot be answered definitely. Most probably they 



') Identification of the single specimen a little uncertain on account of the very poor 

 preservation. 



