284 Annals of the South African Museum. 



there are said to be many specimens, supplies some of the deficiencies 

 of Gray's inadequate diagnosis, but is not wholly satisfactory. He 

 says the species is pentagonal, and then that R = r ; of course if 

 R = r, the outline is approximately circular; probably R = l-25r. 

 Of the ambulacral spines, he says they are arranged in a single series ; 

 if this were true, the species would be unique; if it means the furrow 

 series only it is true of all Asterinas; if it refers only to the actinal 

 surface of the plate it would be distinctive ; but there is no way of 

 determining just what is meant. Bell records this species in his 

 South African Report, 1905, as occurring at three stations, but he 

 gives no information about the material and there is reason for 

 doubting whether he examined the specimens carefully. Some at 

 least seem to have been the following species, dyscrita. 



ASTERINA DYSCRITA *, Sp. HOV. 



Plate XVI. Figs. 5, 6. 



R = 14 mm. ; r = 11 mm. ; R = 1*3 r ; v. d. = 5-5 mm. General 

 form pentagonal with slightly concave or notched sides, rather thick. 

 Abactinal plates scarcely distinguishable under the covering of coarse, 

 spherical granules; these are -20--35 mm. in diameter and occur 

 4-10 on each plate ; the plates or at least the groups of granules, are 

 arranged very regularly in longitudinal series, radially, and hence in 

 diagonal series, interradially. Papulae fairly numerous but small, 

 not so large as most of the granules. 



Actinal intermediate plates numerous, in regular series parallel to 

 ambulacral furrows, and hence forming oblique series running to the 

 margins; each plate of the series adjoining adambulacrals carries a 

 single, stout, bluntly pointed spinelet ; in the next series, a few plates 

 carry two spinelets but most have only one ; in the following series, 

 nearly all the plates carry two ; the size of the spinelets decreases 

 from the adambulacrals outward. 



Adambulacral armature consists of two (or very rarely three) furrow 

 spinelets, and a single large subambulacral spine, on the actinal sur- 

 face of each plate ; furrow spinelets slender, '75- - 80 mm. long, sub- 

 equal ; subambulacral spine, nearly a millimeter long, stout, slightly 

 flattened, blunt or almost truncate. 



Oral plates each with 6 or 7 marginal spines and with one large, 

 blunt spine on the actinal surface near the middle; the innermost 

 spine (one of the pair at tip of jaw) is a millimeter long, stout, flat 



hard to determine, in reference to its doubtful status. 



