yO " ENDEAVOUR " SCIENTIFIC RESULTS. 



Tasmania, and this individual is also peculiar in the large 

 number of disc scales and the short, thorny disk spines ; the 

 disk-diameter, however, is only 6.5 mm., and I beheve the 

 peculiarities are associated with youth. The smallest speci- 

 men is from east of Maria Island, Tasmania, and still retains 

 the large, transparent central plate of the disk, known to be 

 characteristic of the very young of some other species of 

 Ophiothrix ; its disk spines are quite thorny and relatively 

 rather short. Nineteen specimens. 



Locs. — Twenty miles south-east by east of Tasman Head, 

 Tasmania, 80-85 fathoms. 



East of Maria Island, Tasmania, 78 fathoms. 



Entrance to Oyster Bay, Tasmania. 



East of Babel Island, Bass Strait, 65-70 fathoms. 



Off Gabo Island, Victoria, 200 fathoms. 



Ophiothrix c^spitosa, Lyman. 



Ophiothrix coespitosa, Lyman, Bull. Mus. Comp. ZooL 

 Harvard, vi., 1879, p. 53. 



These specimens range in disk-diameter from 1.5 to 6 mm., 

 and in colour from bright reddish-pink to purplish-gray^ 

 brownish-yellow and nearly white. The disk covering shows 

 much diversity also, ranging from a uniform covering of 

 minute thorny, somewhat stellate stumps, which even conceal 

 the radial shields, to one where the thorny stumps are very 

 largely replaced by rough spinelets and the radial shields are 

 more or less bare ; there are many intermediate stages. The 

 upper arm plates and the arm spines are more uniform, but 

 not perfectly so. I cannot see that there is any correlation 

 between the characters mentioned and the locality whence 

 the specimen came. The seven specimens from off BaUina, 

 New South Wales, were aU found on the abactinal surface of 

 a Sea-urchin {Prionocidaris australis) ; they are all young and 

 are bright reddish-pink, except two which have pale pink 

 arms and a light coloured disk hardly tinged with pink. In 

 view of the well-known instability of characters in the genus, 

 and the present multiplicity of species, I think it best to 

 regard all the specimens as 0. coespitosa and leave it for some 

 future worker in Australia to determine whether J am right. 

 Forty-one specimens. 



