Vol. XXIII, pp. 95-98 May 27, 1910 



PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE ,''. 



BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



ON THE TYPE SPECIMEN OF THE CRINOID DESCRIBED 

 BY MtJLLEPv AS ALECTO PURPUREA. 



BY AUSTIN HOBART CLARK. 



In the year 1843 Professor Johannes Miiller described, under 

 the name of Alecto purpurea, a supposedly new comatulid which 

 had been brought from Australia by Preiss. No further men- 

 tion of this form is found until 1884 when Professor F. Jeffrey 

 Bell, in reporting upon the collections made in northeastern 

 Australia by the Alert, tentatively identified some of his speci- 

 mens with it. Dr. P. H. Carpenter, in the preparation of the 

 Challenger report upon the comatulids, visited Berlin, and was 

 able personally to examine Miiller 's original specimen. From 

 an examination of the notes which he made from it, he decided 

 that it represented the species which was originally diagnosed by 

 Linntfius in 1758, on the basis of an example from the Indian 

 Ocean still preserved at Lund, as Asterias pectinata . Carpenter's 

 verdict has been everywhere accepted as final, and Miiller 's 

 Alecto purpurea has been allowed to lapse into the synonomy of 

 the Linnsean Asterias pectinata, the Comatida pectinata as now 

 understood. 



The authorities of the Berlin Museum have recently been so 

 kind as to submit to me for study, in connection with the 

 material in the U. S. National Museum, their entire collection 

 of recent crinoids, and they had the generosity to include such 

 of the old Miillerian types as are in their possession. It is 

 needless to remark that this act of courtesy on their part has 

 placed me under the greatest obligation to them. All who 

 have studied the recent crinoids know that many of Miiller's 

 descriptions, written nearly 70 years ago, are very difficult to 



22— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. XXIII, 1910. (95) 



