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



the Linnean type of Asterias pectinata and the new form which he proposed to call 

 Asterias tenella. He described the habitat of the latter as " St Croix" ; and this is given as 

 the island of " Santa Cruz " in Gmelin's edition of the Systema Naturae, where Asterias 

 tenella is added to Asterias pectinata and Asterias multiradiata of the earlier editions. 



Lamarck took but little notice of these three species when he established the genus 

 Comatula. Asterias pectinata was not noticed by him at all, though he proposed a new 

 name, Comatula mediterranea, for Linck's Decacnemos rosacea, which had been included 

 by Linnaeus in Asterias pectinata ; while he referred Asterias tenella with a % to his 

 new species Comatula brachiolata, 1 which we now know to be an Actinometra closely 

 allied to the type of Asterias pectinata. Lamarck, however, was the only post-Linnean 

 zoologist who recognised that Asterias tenella was a Comatulid and not a Star-fish, a fact 

 which would seem sufficiently obvious when we remember that Retzius had pointed out 

 how it had been hitherto confused with Asterias pectinata. Goldfuss, indeed, gave the 

 name Comatula tenella to a fossil from Solenhofen, which was one of the four species 

 subsequently placed by Agassiz in his new genus Saccocoma. 



Asterias tenella seems to have entirely escaped the notice of Johannes Muller when 

 he examined the Eetzian collection at Lund in 1841, and it has consequently altogether 

 dropped out of the literature. The original of the type, however, is still extant, together 

 with the examples of Asterias pectinata and Asterias multiradiata from the Indian Seas 

 which are the types of these two species respectively. I have been privileged to examine 

 all three, and find Asterias tenella to be very different from Asterias pectinata, for it is 

 identical with the well-known Scandinavian species which was described in 1844 by 

 Diiben and Koren as Alecto sarsii.' This specific name has been in use for nearly forty 

 years, and the range of the type was extended to lat. 70° N. by the " Willem Barents"; 

 whde the " Porcupine " had previously dredged it at various localities in the Fseroe 

 Channel and also at 740 fathoms as far south in the Atlantic as lat. 39° N. 



In the year 1880, however, the same species was obtained several times off the coast 

 of New England by the explorations of the United States Coast Survey and Fish Commis- 

 sion. Two years later Mr. Verrill 3 recognised that Alectro dentata, which was described 

 by Say in 1S25 from a specimen found at Great Egg Harbour, New Jersey, is identical 

 with Antedon sarsii, which occurs in abundance at various depths off the American coast 

 from New Jersey to Nova Scotia. A restoration of Say's specific name thus became 

 inevitable, and the association of the type with the familiar name of a deservedly 

 honoured Norwegian naturalist was no longer possible. Now, however, it appears that 

 forty-two years before the publication of Say's name Retzius had described the same 

 species from the American coast, and I have much pleasure therefore in restoring his name. 



1 Op. cit, p. 535. 



2 Ofversigt af Skandinaviens Echinodurmei', K. Svensk. Vetenst Akad. Handl, 1844 (1846), p. 231, t. vi. tig. 2. 



3 Notice of the remarkable Marine Fauna occupying the outer hanks off the Southern Coast of New England, 

 No. 4, Amer. Journ. Sci. and Arts, 1882, vol. xxiii. p. 222. 



