258 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Both O. mgrota and O. folklandica are viviparous. In my Echinoderms of South 

 Africa (Vid. Medd. Dansk Naturh. Foren. xciii, 1933, p. 333) I have stated, in dis- 

 cussing the viviparous South African species Ophiomitrella corynephora, H. L. Clark, 

 that O. ingrata appears not to be viviparous, judging from the scarce material at that 

 time available to me. This, however, is not so. O. ingrata is viviparous. There appears 

 to be only one young at a time in each bursa, reaching a very large size so as to fill up 

 the bursa completely. Further, O. ingrata is a protandric hermaphrodite, the young 

 specimens being mainly males, the adult specimens females. In a specimen of 4 mm. 

 diameter I found a very large testis distally on the adradial side of the bursae and a small 

 female gonad on the interradial side. In the largest specimens there may still be traces 

 of male sexual products in gonads which otherwise contain eggs. 



O. falklandica is also viviparous and in general a protandric hermaphrodite. As I have 

 found an adult specimen (7 mm. diameter of disk) to be purely male, it would seem that 

 some specimens perhaps remain males throughout life — or perhaps become pure males 

 again after having been hermaphrodites. There are two to five young ones at a time, of 

 the same size, in each bursa, the young ones, which reach a considerable size with up 

 to twelve arm joints, being jammed together in the most extraordinary way so that one 

 wonders how they manage to get out of the bursae. In one specimen, which had only 

 one to two young ones left in the bursae, the next batch of embryos were already found, 

 squeezed in between the arms of the young ones, and of so irregular shape that it is 

 astonishing that they could develop into regular brittle-stars. One of the young 

 ones had a young embryo in its mouth, evidently in the act of devouring it — rather 

 a peculiar case, analogous to that of the Comatulid, Isometra vivipara, in which the 

 Pentacrinoids, attached to the cirri of the mother, catch and devour their sister and 

 brother larvae, on their passage from the marsupium in the pinnulae down to the cirri 

 (cf. Mortensen, 1918, The Crinoidea of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition, vi, 8, p. 15). 



One of the specimens from St. WS 773 contains the remarkable parasitic Copepod 

 Ophioika, Stephensen. 



Koehler has transferred the species ingrata, including falklandica, from Ophio- 

 mitrella to his new genus Ophioripa, established in his work on the Ophiurans of the 

 Philippine Seas (Bull. U.S. Nat. Mus., No. 100, 1922, p. 117), this genus difltering from 

 Ophiomitrella "in the large dorsal plates of the disk, which are provided with a trans- 

 parent border, in the very small under arm plates, and in the wide separation along the 

 median dorsal line of the arm of the columns of arm spines ". I think this genus rather 

 poorly characterized, and in any case, I do not see any sufficient reason for removing 

 the species ingrata, or falklandica, from the genus Ophiomitrella. I would particularly 

 emphasize that there is no transparent border on the dorsal plates of the disk, a feature 

 which Koehler emphasizes as characteristic of the genus Ophioripa. 



As stated in my Echinoderms of South Africa {loc. cit.) the bursae are separate in 

 ingrata, and the same holds good of falklandica, in contradistinction to the South 

 African O. corynephora. The bursae, when containing the large young ones, fill up the 

 disk to such a degree that there is hardly room for the stomach, so that it would seem to 



