JAPANESE ASTEROIDEA. 657 



is a slight bulging out, owing to the presence of the circular 

 stomach, which shows well through the body wall when the speci- 

 men is held up against light. There is also a noticeable out-bulging 

 in the corresponding portion on the dorsal side. On this side 

 there is also a pentaradiate papular area consisting of a central 

 pentagonal portion and five radiating strips extending to the 

 very tip of the arms. The papulae are not very numerous, 

 there being some twenty-five in the central pentagon and some 

 twenty-five or thirty on each arm, the latter being arranged in 

 two somewhat irregular longitudinal rows along the margin of each 

 radiating strip. In my specimen the papulae are very unequal 

 in size, but tliis may be due to different degrees of expansion 

 and contraction. In the papular area the dorsal plates are of 

 unequal sizes, more widely spaced, destitute of any regular ar- 

 rangement, and covered with minute granules, which may vary 

 in number from one to ten or so. In the interradial triangular 

 areas bounded by the radiating strips of the adjacent arms and 

 the margin of the body, the dorsal plates are of nearly uniform 

 size, except near the margin of the body where they are shghtly 

 smaller, are regularly arranged in rows parallel to the radiating 

 strips of the arms and also obhque to these and are more thickly 

 set than in the papular area. The plates, which are not very dis- 

 tinct in surface view, bear each some twelve or fifteen minute 

 spines which are hardly more than pointed granules. The supero- 



îast extensive paper on European starfishes as the authority for the name, was in no way a 

 binomial writer, and that consequently his so-caUed genera (!) have no place even if 1758 had 

 not been agreed upon as the starting point of zoological nomenclature. For a sbitement of the 

 facts in the present case sec Prof. F. Jeffrey Belt, in Annals of Natural History, ser. 6, Vol. 

 VII, 1891, p. 233. The Rev. Canon A. M. Norman (op. cit., p. 382) admits that Anseropoda 

 has priority, but objects to its use because it happens to be etymologically a hybrid. What 

 owuld happen if all generic names which confess this fault were thrown out for the same 

 reason ? " 



