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



Other Localities.— Cape of Good Hope; Port Natal; Ceylon; Nicobar Islands (?) ; 

 Australian Seas (Peron and Lesueur) ; Timor ; Solor ; North Borneo ; Sooloo ; China Sea ; 

 Yedo ; Zebu ; Bohol ; Ubay ; Cabulan ; Batjan ; Ceram ; H.M.S. " Alert," Warrior Reef, 

 Torres Strait, and Port Molle ; Kingsmills Islands ; Moreton Bay, Fiji ; Vavao ; Peru. 



History. — -This name was given by Midler to an individual from some unknown 

 locality which was found by Troschel in the Paris Museum. It had twenty-seven arms, 

 owing to the presence of both distichal and palmar series, and twenty cirri of twelve 

 joints. Midler's description of it in his final memoir 1 does not differ essentially from 

 that which was drawn up for him by Troschel in 1841 ; 2 but he added to it a 

 more detailed diagnosis, based on his own observation, of a specimen from Vavao which 

 he was inclined to refer to the same type. 



Although on two occasions I have searched carefully through the large Comatula- 

 collection in the Paris Museum, a privdege for which I am indebted to the kindness of 

 Professor Perrier, I have been unable to identify the original type of Midler's species. 

 The number of arms, twenty-seven, mentioned by him, is larger than that in some 

 individuals from the voyage of Peron and Lesueur which certainly belong to this species, 

 though I do not think that they can be the type of it as I formerly suggested. But I 

 can find no reference to them in any of Midler's writings, though he must certainly have 

 seen them when at Paris ; while they must also have been known to Lamarck, who 

 founded other species on Comatulae obtained by Peron and Lesueur. 



Although, however, Midler's first type specimen seems to have disappeared, the second 

 one, that from Vavao, is in excellent condition. It was obtained by Hombron and 

 Jacquinot in 1841, during the voyage of the "Astrolabe," and is fortunately not dry, 

 but preserved in spirits. Had Midler been able to visit the Paris Museum himself in 

 1840, he would probably have recognised the identity of the form which he called Alecto 

 parvicirra with that which he found in the Leyden Museum under the name of Comatula 

 timorensis. The two species were described on successive pages of the Berlin Monats- 

 bericht for 1841, but I cannot regard them as different; and though the diagnosis of 

 Comatula timorensis is better than that of Comatula parvicirra, which precedes it, I 

 have preferred to retain the latter name, not on account of its one-page claim to priority, 

 but because it expresses a definite character of this widely distributed type, and does not 

 connect it with any particular locality. 



Two years after making his first communication on the subject of Comatula-s'pecies, 

 Midler described a twenty-armed form from Natal in the Stockholm Museum under the 

 name "Alecto Wahlbergii." 3 It has no palmar series, and further differs in several minor 



1 Abhandl. d. k. Akad. d. Wiss. Berlin, Jahrg. 1847 [1849], p. 256. 



2 Monatsber. d. k. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. Berlin, 1841, p. 185. 



3 Archivf. Naturgesch., 1843, Jahrg. ix. Bd. i. p. 131. 



