ii THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 



and the earlier months of the following year, the greater part of which time was spent 

 at Wurzburg, where I had the constant advantage of Prof Semper's criticism and 

 advice. I also received much valuable help from my father, who freely placed at my 

 disposal all the material which he had accumulated some years before for his investigation 

 of the structure of Antedon, Pentacrimis, and Rhizocrinus. A portion of his observations 

 were communicated to the Eoyal Society in his now classical memoir on the skeleton of 

 Antedon rosacea, and in a later paper on the anatomy of the disk and arms. But he has 

 still a large amount of unpublished material ; and of this I have always been permitted to 

 avail myself as fully as I wished. How important this help has been to me will be 

 apparent to every subsequent worker at Crinoid mor^jhology, my own researches having 

 followed very closely on the lines which he had laid down. The results of my study of 

 Actinometra and various other Crinoids were communicated to the Ijinnean Society in the 

 summer of 1877, and shortly afterwards Sir Wy\'ille Thomson offered to entrust me with 

 the preparation of the Report upon the Comatulse dredged by the Challenger. The 

 collection was sent to me in January 1878 ; and for the next four years the time which I 

 could spare from my professional duties was devoted pretty continuously to the examina- 

 tion and description of some hundred and fifty new species. Eighteen plates had been 

 drawn and nearly all the specific diagnoses written out, when on Sir Wyville's untimely 

 death in March 1882 I was requested by Mr. John Murray to include the Stalked 

 Crinoids in my Report. 



During the cruise of H.M.S. Challenger, and also for some years before it, Sir 

 Wyville had devoted much attention to the Stalked Crinoids, and he proposed himself 

 to investigate the collection of this group of animals which was made during the Expedi- 

 tion. He also arranged with Prof. Alexander Agassiz that he should embody the 

 descriptions of the Stalked Crinoids dredged in the Caribbean Sea by the U.S. Coast 

 Survey steamer " Blake " in his Report on the Challenger collection, so that it might 

 assume the form of a monograph of all the species known to science. He was able 

 to do but little with the " Blake" collection, however; and with the concurrence of Prof. 

 Agassiz it was sent to me by Mr. Murray along with the Challenger collection, proofs 

 of plates, drawings, preparations, and some notes, in the spring of 1882. 



Sir Wyville had not made much progress with the preparation of his Rej)ort. Twenty- 

 eight plates illustrating the structure of Holopus and of the more remarkable types 

 dredged by the Challenger had been drawn and lithographed at Edinburgh under his 

 superintendence by Messrs. George AVest and W. S. Black, but he was never able to 

 draw up any specific diagnoses ; and he left no manuscript behind him of any kind, 

 except one or two generic and specific names which he had written upon the proofs of 

 some of these plates. Descriptions of Hyocrinus, Bathycrrmts, and of Pentacrimis 

 maclearcmus had, however, already been published in his popular work on the Voyage of 

 the Challenger — The Atlantic. 



