EEPOET ON THE ASTEROIDEA. 571 



Colour in alcohol, a bleached yellowish grey. 



Locality. — Off Yokohama, Japan. Depth 5 to 25 fathoms. 



Remarks. — This species is characterised by the isolated abactinal spinelets, with the 

 high-mounting, abruptly terminating, sheath of membrane surmounted by a wreath of 

 pedicellarise, and by the presence of the oblique series of three spinelets on the actinal 

 plates immediately external to the adambulacral plates. The general facies of the form is 

 different from that of the other pentactinid species of Asterias. 



There is an example of this species in the Leyden Museum, from Japan, collected by 

 Von Siebold, which I have had the opportunity of studying through the kindness of the 

 late Professor ScMe^el and Dr. Jentinck. It is labelled " Asteracanthion rubens" and is 

 stated to have been determined by Troschel ; the presence of examples of that species from 

 Japan in the Leyden collection being recorded in the System der Asteriden (p. 17). I 

 find two figures, but rather unsatisfactory, of this example on the proof of one of the 

 unpublished plates of Echinodermata intended for the " Fauna japonica" (Echinodermata, 

 Tab. vi. figs. 3 and 4). This section, unfortunately, was never completed. Other examples 

 of Asterias in the same collection, labelled "Asteracanthion rubens" also brought by Von 

 Siebold from Japan, and probably determined at the same time as the above, are the 

 Asterias amurensis of Liitken. 



5. Asterias glomerata, n. sp. (PI. CV. figs. 1-4). 



Pays five. E = 95 mm. ; r = 14 mm. E < 7 r. Breadth of a ray near the base, 17 mm. 



Pays elongate, thick, robust, broad at the base, tapering to the extremity, which is 

 pointed but not attenuated. Lateral walls nearly vertical. Pays slightly convex abac- 

 tinally. Disk small, the rays appearing crushed together at their base. Interbrachial 

 arcs acute. 



The abactinal plates present no definite order of arrangement, though an irregular and 

 often much angulated median radial line may frequently be more or less clearly traced. 

 Each plate bears a single, short, moderately robust, truncate spinelet surrounded by from 

 five to eight or nine large pedicellariae with vesicular bases, the whole group having the 

 appearance of a more or less prominent tuft of coarse papilliform granules, the central 

 spinelet being most prominent. In the interspaces between the tufts are numerous, 

 closely crowded papulae, and large forficiforni pedicellariae are present here and there. 

 The abactinal area is bounded by a regular longitudinal series of supero-marginal plates, 

 which bear a single spinelet and resemble the abactinal plates above described, excepting 

 that the spinelet is rather more prominent and more robust, and the encircling group of 

 pedicellariae rather larger. In large specimens two spinelets are occasionally present about 

 the middle or towards the extremity of the ray. Between the supero-marginal and infero- 

 marginal series of plates is a wide space devoid of spinelets, which stands in the vertical 



