(502 BULLETIN 82, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Hartlaub's Adinomefra parvicirra type A corresponds to the form here treated 

 as Comanthus samoana, while his Actinometra parvicirra type B corresponds in the 

 main to Comanthus parvicirra, but also includes some specimens of C. timorensis. 



In 1909, on the basis of 4*specimens from Samoa which had been presented to 

 the United States National Museum by Sir Charles N. E. Eliot, I described Comanthus 

 (Comanthus) samoana as a new species. These specimens were very obviously different 

 from any examples of parvicirra which I remembered having seen, but on reexamining 

 the collection of the Copenhagen Museum, which was then in Washington and on 

 which I had already submitted a report for publication, I found that 2 specimens from 

 ?New Holland which I had identified as parvicirra agreed with my new form. In the 

 report on the Copenhagen collection these are given under Comanthus {Comanthus) 

 rotalaria, the name which I at that time employed for parvicirra, and the locality is 

 given as ?AustraUa. At the time these were collected New Holland was used chiefly 

 to designate Western Australia, and I believe that that is the region whence they 

 came. 



In 1911 I recorded and gave notes upon 2 specimens from New Caledonia and 

 one from the Jolo Archipelago in the Paris Museum. In 1912 I recorded several 

 others wliich I had seen in the collection of the Hamburg Museum. Among the 

 specimens of C. parvicirra listed in my paper on the crinoids of the Hamburg Museum 

 the 4 from Peru should have been assigned to samoana. In a paper on the crinoids 

 of the Berlin Museum which was also published in 1912 I mentioned and gave notes 

 upon 2 specimens in that institution. 



In my monograph of the crinoids of the Indian Ocean published in 1912 I recorded 

 and described a specimen from the Invisible Bank, and gave a synonymy and a list 

 of previously ascertained localities. Among these was ?Australia, which refers to 

 the specimens in the Copenhagen Museum, although there was no explanation of 

 that fact. 



In a paper on the crinoids of the Solomon Islands published in 1912 I recorded 

 and gave notes upon a specimen from Ugi. 



In 1913 in a supplement to my memoir on the crinoids of southwestern Australia 

 (1911) I republished the description of the specimen from the Abrolhos Islands 

 recorded in the preceding year. In another paper published in 1913 I recorded 3 

 specimens which I had examined in the British Museum in 1910. Two of these, 

 from Samoa, bore the name Actinometra trachygaster. It was from these and 2 others 

 from Samoa in the Hamburg Museum bearing the same name that I learned of the 

 identity of my samoana and Liitken's trachygaster. 



In 1915 Dr. Hubert Lyman Clark recorded C. samoanum from Mer, where he 

 said that only a few specimens were found. They occurred with, and were not 

 recognized as distinct from, annulatum; but on his return to Cambridge he foimd that 

 they could at that time be distinguished mthout difficulty. In the same paper he 

 described as a new species Comanthus luteofuscum, which he said was not at all rare 

 on the reef flat at Mer, though it was nowhere abundant. 



When I received his paper my manuscript on the comatulids of the Siboga expe- 

 dition was practically completed. Largely on the strength of his statement that 

 luteofuscum is obviously closely allied to both parvicirrum and annulatum, and over- 



