A MONOGRAPH OF THE EXISTING CRINOIDS 665 



the notes on the specimens assif^ned to comasteripinna he said that the combs on the 

 proximal pinnules have 8-11 teeth and occur beyond the oral pinnules on about every 

 alternate pinnide, or irref;jularly, as far as the twelfth, fifteenth, twenty-fifth, or 

 thirtieth, while in the specimens assigned to comanthipinna the comb consists of 

 about 12 low thin teeth and docs not extend beyond P2. In vanipinna, as given in 

 1927, the combs consist of 6-8, 8-1 1 , or 12-13 large teeth in a double row which extend 

 to the extreme tip of the pinnule and occur as far as P4 or P5, P3 being often without 

 a comb. 



He said that comanthipinna has stouter arm bases than comasteripinna and 

 somewhat longer branchials, but remarked that it was chiefly the different appearance 

 of the combs that caused him to separate the 2 types and to designate them by dif- 

 ferent names. 



Gisl6n regarded the separation of timorensis and parvicirra as based on the num- 

 ber of arms to be artificial and remarked that the facts of the matter are undoubtedly 

 that timorensis (annulata) represents one group of forms with a generally greater 

 number of arms which are longer and stouter, wliile parvicirra represents another 

 with a smaller number of more slender arms. Nevertheless, he said, both the "spe- 

 cies" vary so considerably that they often intrude upon each other's spheres. 



He wTote that the specimens obtained by Doctor Bock show that within the 

 subgenus Comanthus {Vania) there occur combs of what he described as the Comaster 

 and Comanthus types, and he found in Mortensen's Japanese specimens combs of 

 the Vania type in addition. 



He placed Bock's specimens in 2 "subspecies" {comasteripinna and comanthi- 

 pinna), according to the type of comb. He said that he had been neither able nor 

 willing to discuss the innumerable synonyms of this species {parvicirra), and that it 

 is not possible to distribute the names among the 2 new subspecies because most of 

 the authors have given no information about the occurrence and appearance of the 

 combs, and that even the present author "who has described hundreds of specimens 

 belonging to this species," has hardly given any other information than about cirri 

 and division series. He inferred that it was therefore only natural that I had escaped 

 making the observation that a comb of the Comaster type also occurs in the subgenus 

 Comanthus {Vania). 



He recalled that in his report on Mjoberg's crinoids (1919) he recorded Carpen- 

 ter's statement concerning the occurrence of the Comaster type of comb in 3 of the 

 described forms which I had placed in the synonymy of parvicirra {elongata, simplex, 

 and quadrata). 



As all the specimens in Mjoberg's collection had 4 components in the IIBr 

 series and were Comaster-Wke in respect to the distribution of the combs, he, trusting 

 to my generic diagnoses, assigned the specimens to the genus Comaster, those with 

 stouter cirri to Comaster muWfida and those with rudimentary cirri to C. typica, 

 whereas they should (according to him) have been assigned to Comanthus parvicirra. 



He said that since then he had established the fact that the occurrence of combs 

 far out on the arms is not exclusively a feature of the genus Comaster, but is found in 

 the subgenus Comanthus. 

 97298—31 43 



