The sudden stream of light catches our creatures 

 unawares. But what is this*? . . . Not tiny A. 

 squamata of my early experience : it is the species 

 Ophiopholis aculcata, the most beautiful and most 

 conspicuous and perhaps the largest species of all 

 ophiurans. The individual members are full- 

 grown, each arm measuring three inches in length 

 while the disk is three fourths of an inch in diame- 

 ter. In color they are spotted with large patches of 

 purple on a background of golden yellow. No 

 longer can I refer to one of the animals as "it"; 

 unlike little A. squamata, which is a hermaphro- 

 dite, the sexes in this newer species are separate. 

 A, squamata differs also from these in that it does 

 not strew its eggs into the water to be fertilized 

 and hatched, but carries them in its disk until an 

 adult-like form is developed. 



Here I must inform the reader that in accordance 

 with the common hazards of dredging, I never 

 again came across another A. squamata in my lo- 

 cality; nor had I found other kinds in sufficient 

 quantity or sufficiently vigorous to use for obser- 

 vation. So I did the next best thing. I did what 

 every student does when he is pressed to obtain 

 rare material ; although I do not recall having seen 



[69] 



