A MONOGRAPH OF THE EXISTING CRINOIDS. 



By Austin Hobart Clark, 



Asnsiant Curalor, Division of Marine InvcrtebraUs, United SUiUs National Museum. 



PREFACE. 



HISTORY OF THE WORK, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE MATERIAL STUDIED. 



Upon the return of the United States Fisheries steamer Albatross from her 

 cruise L 1906 through the Bering Sea and in Asiatic Russian and Japanese waters, 

 durin "vhid. I accompanied her as acting naturalist, the Comnnssioner of Fishenes 

 Hon George M. BowL, very kindly intrusted to me the work of identifying and 

 describing' the Crinoidea which had been collected. 



The aim of the work as originally planned was the preparation of a memoir 

 deahn^ only with the specimens coUected on tliis cruise, but it was later suggest d 

 tl aa incSeTn my study the crinoids from the North Pacifie ^vdiich had previously 

 bten cXcted by the AllLss, and had been deposited in the Umted States National 



^^""'m work proved to be far more of an undertaking than had been anticipated; 

 so Jat Jas th! number of new species and so radically did they alter the conception 

 of fhe relent re;resentatives of tlie Crinoidea as a whole that I was at last forced to 

 bpmn at the becrinning and to review criricaUy the whole sub]ect. 



"^ The two gr^t monographs of Dr. Pldlip Herbert Carpenter were, of course the 



foundation upon which I expected to build ; but, ^vdth the enormous mass of materia 



at h nri soon discovered that the subject must be approached along somewhat 



r/ ./ llnrfrom those by wliich it was approached by Carpenter, especially in 



different hnes f^om those ^^ ^ j^^^^^,^^^ ,^d, with nothing but 



Eec^t^bTo m ; atlmptdTo elucidate the systematic problems presented 

 ^tl a S free from preconceived ideas. The specimens were grouped mto species 

 Td the species nto tentative genera, and these genera again into tentative fannhes 

 and tiic spec ts mi JJ j internal, wliich I myself detenmned; when my 



a Umited cUstrict only has seldom proved long hved, and I was there ore extremuy 

 aiid^us to examine additional collections in order to test my conclusions and to 

 L'TtiSate furiher many problems comiected with geographic, bathymetnc, and 



