VI.— DESCRIPTION OF THE SPECIMENS. 



Class CRINOIDEA. 

 Order NEOCPJNOIDEA. 



Family Comatulid^e, d'Orbigny, 1852; emend. P. H. Carpenter, 1888. 



Crinoids with the calyx closed below by the enlarged top joint of the larval stem, 

 which develops cirri and generally separates from the stem joints below it, so that the 

 calyx is free. The basals may form a more or less complete ring on the exterior of the 

 calyx, or be only represented by an internal rosette. Five or ten rays, either simple or 

 more or less divided. The first axillary is the second, or (very rarely) the first joint 

 above the calyx-radials. Definite interradial plates usually absent. 



The mouth central, except in one genus. 



Remarks. — The family Comatulidse, which was established by d'Orbigny 1 in 1852, is 

 practically equivalent to a group which was proposed more than twenty years previously 

 by de Blainville, 2 under the name of the " Asterencrinides libres." So far as I am aware, 

 de Blainville was the first author to make any definite separation of the Feather-stars 

 from the remaining Stellerids. 



He divided this order into three families, the Asteridea, the Asterophydea, and the 

 Asterencrinidca, which last Miller had previously called Crinoidea. 



De Blainville further subdivided the Asterencrinidea into two sections, the first of 

 which was " les Asterencrinides libres." He defined it as having a " corps libre, et sans 

 tige qui servirait a le fixer " ; and he referred to it the single genus Comatula, Lamarck. 



In the great work of Goldfuss, 3 which was published a few years later, there is, 

 however, no special separation of the genus Comatula from the other Stellerids, and it 

 simply appears as the first genus in his order " Asterites liberi," altogether separate from 

 the Stalked Crinoids, which are classed as the Stilasteritae, though the resemblance between 

 them and Comatula did not escape the notice of Goldfuss. He gave an account of the 

 anatomy of two recent species, and referred to the genus some fossils from Solenhofen, 



1 Cours elementaire de Geologie et de Paleontologie stratigraphique, 1852, t. ii. fasc. i. p. 138. 



2 Diet. d. Sei. Nat., 1830, t. lx. p. 229. 



3 Petrefacta Germanise, Diisseldorf, 1826-35, vol. i. p. 201. 



