406 Annul* of the South African Museum, 



only one specimen is beyond recognition. That is apparently a 

 Tlujone which was evidently preserved in formalin, and from which 

 the anterior end is missing. As there are no calcareous structures 

 left, there is no clue to its identity. The dried specimens yielded 

 surprisingly well to prolonged soaking in water, followed by weak 

 alcohol. The most serious difficulty with the collection however is 

 the fact that in some way, at sometime, labels have been mixed, 

 so that one jar containing live species bears both Natal and Mozam- 

 bique labels and there are other jars in which there were more 

 labels than specimens. On the other hand a few bottles contained 

 no labels at all. 



In spite of these drawbacks, the collection throws a great deal 

 of light on the hitherto little known holothurian fauna of South 

 Africa and its origin. There are also three species which seem to 

 be new to science, each representing a large, cosmopolitan genus. 

 One of the most striking features of the collection is the entire 

 absence of apodous forms, neither a synaptid nor a molpadiid being 

 present. This remarkable fact emphasizes anew the entire absence 

 of apodous holothurians in the South African region. Possibly they 

 may yet be found there but they must be at least relatively rare. 

 The Elpidiidae are also conspicuous by their absence, a single spec- 

 imen in the PIETER FAURE collection being the only representative 

 of the family as yet noted from that portion of the Southern Ocean. 



The collection sent me contains 174 specimens of 24 species. It 

 is a little hard to determine how many of these were previously 

 known from South Africa for no list of the holothurians of the 

 region has ever been published. In Theel's great monograph on 

 the CHALLENGER holothurians, the most useful, reliable and alto- 

 gether satisfactory work dealing with this somewhat difficult class 

 of echinoderms, there are some twenty species given which seem to 

 occur in the region covered by this report. I have found a few 

 other species recorded in subsequent papers, so that there are about 

 25 species now listed from South Africa but at least five of these 

 are synonymous with others of the list, so that 20 seems to be the 

 number of valid species now known. Of these 12 are in the col- 

 lection sent to me from the South African Museum which also 

 contains 12 species new to the fauna of the region. There are thus 

 32 species included in the present report, but it is perfectly clear 

 from the available data that not more than three or four holothu- 

 rians are at all common on the coasts of South Africa, at least 

 south of Delagoa Bay. 



Of the 32 species, 27 are truly littoral occurring in water less 





