

The EcJiinoderiii /'Wwwa of South Africa. i<>7 



than 20 fins, deep, and any one of them may be found at or just 

 below low tide mark. Of the other live species. "J are ahvssal and 

 :3 belong in the continental group. Of the "11 littoral species. I 1 J are 

 endemic so far as our present knowledge goes hut it is very proba- 

 hle that some of these have a wider range than is at present 

 suspected. Of the other 15 species, one is known from the Red 

 Sea, one is tropicopolitan and the others are well-known ludo- 

 Pacific species. There is not a single Atlantic or West Indian 

 species nor one known from the southem coasts of either Australia * 

 or South America. 



On the other hand, of the three continental species two are 

 endemic while the third is a North Atlantic form, and of the two 

 abyssal species, one is cosmopolitan and one is of the North Atlan- 

 tic. It seems clear then that the very scanty deep water holothu- 

 rian fauna of South Africa has come from the western side of the 

 continent and apparently is closed allied to that of the North 

 Atlantic, while the shallow water fauna is distinctly Indo-Pacilic. 

 It is noteworthy that there are included in this report no fewer than 

 !) holothiirians not certainly known from south of Mozambique and 

 there are 2 others not known from south of Delagoa Bay. As there 

 are 5 others not known from south of Natal, it is evident that 

 only 11 species of Holothurians occur on the coasts of Cape Colony. 



In 188-4, Bell (ALERT Ech., p. 509) listed half a do/en holothurians 

 from Mozambique, with the preliminary remark that they were 

 "forms that are so thoroughly well known to students of this group 

 of animals that it has not been thought necessary to burden the 

 text with the ordinary bibliographical references". He even fails to 

 give the authority for the names but these are easily guessed. In 

 1884, two years prior to TheeTs great work, the identification of 

 Holothurians was a tedious undertaking and there were few species 

 of which it could be said that they were "thoroughly well known". 

 Of Bell's six, one (Actinopyga mauritiana) is well-characterized and 

 is fairly well-known but Hohthuria impatiens is a very puzzling form. 

 H. niii.riiint is absolutely unknown in every detail, H. amboinensis is 

 little known but is probably synonymous with H. afro. //. pnlla is 

 practically unknown and H. ln</wn<t is now known to be synonymous 

 with H. leucospilota. It might be added that we do not know whether 

 the H. maxima of Bell's list is the species of Delle Chiaje or of 

 Forskaal, and that H. j>//<i is listed with a question mark. Obviously 



* Ludwig considers his Colochints australis from Australia synonymous with 

 Pentacta doliolum (Pallas) of Cape of Good Hope and Angra Pequena. Both forms 

 are very imperfectly known and their identity seems to me highly improbable. 



