REPORT ON THE ASTEROIDEA. 601 



" Porcupine " Expedition : 



Station 51, 18C9. In the Faeroe Channel. Lat, 60° 6' 0" N., long. 8 14' 0" W. 

 Depth 440 fathoms. Bottom temperature 5°-5 C. ; surface temperature 10°"9 C. 



Other examples of Odinia pandina were also obtained during the " Porcupine " dredg- 

 ings, but unfortunately they are without record of station or locality. 



Remarks. — This handsome form was confounded by Sir Wyville Thomson with 

 Brisinga coronata, the figure which he gives under that name in The Depths of the 

 Sea (fig. 5, p. 67) being without doubt the Asterid above described. In the specimen 

 preserved, all the rays, excepting several of the small recurved ones, are now separated 

 from the disk; but notwithstanding this, I feel little or no hesitation in believing that the 

 example before me is the one from which the drawing for the woodcut was made. The 

 general form, the character of the spinulation of the ovarial regions, the irregularly dis- 

 posed sacculi with crowded pedicellariae upon the rays, the vertical lateral series of spine- 

 lets, and the large single actinal spinelets on the adambulacral plates, are all faithfully 

 represented ; if to these characters be added the presence of papulae, the shortness of 

 the adambulacral plates, the strongly spinulate disk (which is not sufficiently shown in 

 the woodcut), and the form and armature of the mouth-plates, we have a congeries of 

 characters readily distinguishing Odinia pandina from Brisinga coronata. 



Genus Brisinga, Asbjornsen. 

 Brisinga, Asbj0rnsen, Fauna Litt. Xorvegue, 1S56, Artdet Hefte, p. 95. 



Since the discovery of this remarkable Asterid thirty-five years ago by the Norwegiau 

 poet, Asbjornsen, in the picturesque Hardanger Fjord, a considerable number of allied forms 

 have rewarded the dredging operations in deep water which have since then been under- 

 taken, and the type that was once thought so rare and limited in occurrence is now 

 found to possess a world-wide distribution. Owing to the great similarity in general facies 

 of all the members of the group, a certain laxity of conception as to the generic scope of 

 Brisinga sprang up, and a number of species were provisionally set down as Brisinga 

 which present characters that entitle them to stand as independent genera. In my pre- 

 liminary note on the deep-water forms of the starfishes collected [by the Challenger, I 

 myself 1 referred to a number of these under the name of Brisinga. In 1885, Perrier 2 

 proposed a limitation of the genus, with which I entirely concur ; indeed, prior to the 

 publication of his memoir on the Asteroidea of the " Travailleur " and " Talisman " Expedi- 

 tions, I had drawn up the synopses of species here given, in which the forms now placed 

 under Odinia and Fretjella were recognised as independent genera ; for these I have great 

 pleasure in adopting the admirably chosen names assigned to them by my learned col- 

 league, in preference to the MS. names I had proposed to give them. 



1 Narr. Chall. Exp., 1885, vol. i., pp. 607-C17. L 2 Ann. Sci. Nat. (Zool.), 1S85, t. six. Art. No. 8. 



(ZOOL. CI7ALI.. EXP. PART LI. — 1888.) 7l3 



