82 " ENDEAVOUR " SCIENTIFIC RESULTS. 



oxyconus is not otherwise known from south or west of Shoal- 

 haven Bight, and I must confess that the occurrence of this 

 specimen taken off Cape Wiles, South Austraha, with an 

 undoubted Astroconus has shaken my faith in the distinctness 

 of the two forms. I should like to believe that the specimen 

 under discussion was wrongly labelled, but I cannot see the 

 shghtest reason for such a belief. The question of the relation- 

 ship of Astroconus and Conocladus is thus reopened and will 

 be discussed further under the next species, but it is worth 

 noting here that up to the present time only eight specimens 

 of C. oxyconus are known and two of these are from unknown 

 locahties, though there is reason to think they are from near 

 Port Jackson ; of the other six, two are known to be from off 

 Port Jackson, one is from Coogee, two from Shoalhaven 

 Bight and one from south of Cape Wiles, South Austraha. 

 Of forty specimens of C. amblyconus now known, all are from 

 New South Wales, while all known specimens of Astroconus 

 are from Bass Strait southward and westward. Evidently 

 Conocladus is the more northern genus and C. oxyconus is 

 much the rarest of the three species. 



Lacs. — Shoalhaven Bight, New South Wales, 15-45 fathoms. 

 Two specimens. 



Fifteen miles south of Cape Wiles, South Austraha. 



Grenus Astroconus, Doderlein. 



Astroconus australis (Verrill). 



Astrophyton australe, Verrill, Bull. U.S. Nat. Mus., iii., 1876, 

 p. 74. 



Astroconus australis, Doderlein, Abh. math-phys. Klasse K. 

 Bayer Akad. Wissensch., ii. Suppl.-Bd., 5, 1911, p. 37. 



This is a remarkable and highly interesting series of this 

 little known species. The fifty-five specimens range in size 

 from young ones, with disks 11-12 mm. in diameter to 

 large adults, whose disks are 45-50 mm. across. Two are 

 perfectly tetramerous. The colour is notably diversified, 

 ranging from nearly uniform pale gray or almost white, 

 through pale gray prettily marked with dull red-purple, 

 to dark gray heavily marked with purphsh ; or the ground 

 colour may be yelloAvish-brown, hght or dark, either with- 

 out markings of red-purple, or prettily marked with that 

 shade ; many individuals have the arms very regularly 

 banded with the red-purple, but in others there are only 



