SEA LILIES, STAEFISHES, ETC. CLAHK. 79 



Genus Ophioceeas, Lyman. 



OpHIOCREAS PHANERUIVI,! S'p. UOV. 



(Plate xxxiii., fig. 1-2.) 



Disk 18 mm. in diameter ; arms 380 mm. long ; arms about 

 20 times the disk-diameter. Disk and arms encased in a 

 smooth, thick skin, which even when dry, shows no sign of 

 calcareous plates or granules and more or less conceals the 

 radial shields and arm-joints. In young specimens the skin 

 is, of course, much thinner and when dry conceals very little. 

 Radial shields narrow and convex, not closely approximate in 

 pairs ; in young specimens, they are flat and are in rather 

 closely joined pairs. Genital shts small (about 3 mm. long), 

 deeply sunken. Tentacle-pores quite smaU ; first 2 pairs on 

 arm, naked ; succeeding pores, all guarded by a pair of short, 

 flattened, rough spines ; where largest (at about middle of 

 arm) the inner spine is 2 mm. long, .80 mm. wide, pointed and 

 prickly for more than half its length ; the outer is 1.5 mm. 

 long by .45 mm. wide and neither as flat, nor as pointed, nor 

 as rough as the inner. The skin of the side of the arm en- 

 cases the basal half of the spines and so forms a thin but con- 

 spicuous wall along each side of the lower surface of the arm ; 

 this occurs in many if not aU species of Ophiocreas. Basal 

 arm-tentacles not encased in cuticular tubes. Teeth only 

 6, triangular and very thick ; no tooth papillae or oral papillae 

 in the adult; in young specimens, a very few tooth papillae 

 are present. Colour (in alcohol or dry), deep red-purple ; 

 young specimens somewhat hghter. Fourteen specimens. 



This species can be distinguished at a glance from any 

 Ophiocreas, of which I know, by the remarkably short and 

 flattened tentacle-scales or arm -spines and the small number 

 of teeth. Although the young specimens (disk=7 mm.; 

 arms about 90-100 mm.) were taken much further north than 

 any of the adults, I see no reason to feel any doubts as to their 

 identity, the short arm-spines are so characteristic. The 

 chief growth-changes appear to be the thickening of the skin, 

 the entire loss of tooth-papillae and the separation and convex 

 thickening of the radial shields. In a specimen with disk- 

 diameter 13 mm., these changes are complete. 



Locs. — Twenty miles off Cape Barren, Cape Barren Island, 

 Tasmania, 70 fathoms. 



East of Flinders Island, Bass Strait, 80-300 fathoms. 



Eastern Slope, Bass Strait, 70-100 fathoms. 



Eight miles east of Sandon Bluffs, New South Wales, 

 35-40 fathoms. 



1. 0rti/6/3o'?= manifest, evident ; in reference to the species being so- 

 well characterised. 



