272 Hi I.I I 1 IN 82, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Siboga Btation 274: «.|T tin- northeastern coast of the Aru Islands (lat. 5°28'12" S., 

 [ong, 134 5 3'64" E I; 57 meters; sand, shells, and stones; December 26, 1899 [A. H. 

 Clark, 1918] (2, Amsterdam M 



Am Islands; Dr. II. Merton's station I : uestof Ngaiguli; 14 meters; coarse yellow 

 Band; February 18, 1908 [Reichensperger, 1013]. 



Biliton, Sun. la Islands: M. Komtnev, 1885 [Kocliler, 1895; A. H. Clark, 1912 (as 

 Sunda Islands)]. 



tfigator; Pocock Island, southeasl of Cape Price, the northernmost point of 

 Great Andaman Island (lat. 13°33'40" N., long. 93°00'30" E.); 36 meters [A. H. 

 Clark, L912] (1, I. M.). 



TSouth Nilandu, Maldive archipelago; 38 meters [Hell, 19021. 



Erroneous locality. — Mergui Archipelago [A. H. Clark, 1911]. This is an error for 

 Andaman Islands. 



graphical range.- From the Philippine Islands southward to Australia, reach- 

 ing Double Island Point, Queensland, and Cape Jaubert, Western Australia, and west- 

 ward to the Andaman Islands, and possibly to the Maldive archipelago. 



Bathymetricai range. — From the shoreline down to 111 meters. The average of 

 21 records for which a definite depth is given is 35 meters. 



History. — Prof. Ludwig von GrafF in 1877 recorded some myzostomos from a 

 comatulid from Hohol in the Philippines, which had been given the manuscript name 

 of Comatula duhia by Prof. Curl Semper, who had collected it a few years before. 

 What this Comatiiln dubia w as is not at all clear. Prof, von Graff referred to it again 

 as Antedon dubia in 18S4, and Carpenter later used the name Antedon dubia 

 for the present species as will appear below. Previously, therefore, I have assumed 

 that Semper's Antedon dubia was the same as Carpenter's Antedon dubia. But as 

 Carpenter never mentioned the former, did not include the Philippines among the 

 localities from which the species under consideration was known to him, and gave 

 the Aru Islnnds as the only locality for the form which he called Antedon dubia, I now 

 believe that the dubia of Semper and the dubia of Carpenter must have been two differ- 

 ent species and that the former should not be included in the synonymy of the present 

 species, but instead should be placed in the list of unidentifiable forms. Semper's 

 dubia is mentioned here, however, because it has so long been, on what I now believe 

 to have been quite insufficient grounds, included in the synonymy of this species. 



The present species was first described by Dr. P. H. Carpenter under the name of 

 . I >, ion crt i, ulata on September 26, 1882, his description having been based upon some 

 dried fragments he had studied in the Hamburg Museum. 



Five days after this, on October 1, 1882, Prof. F. Jeffrey Bell published specific 

 formulas for two new Bpeciea which he called Antedon decipiens and Antedon irregularis, 

 but he gave no indication of their habitat or of their origin. 



In the report upon the collections of H. M. S. Alert published in 1884 Professor 

 Hell described and figured Antedon decipiens from specimens secured in the Arafura 

 Sea (32-36 fathoms), Dundas Strait, and Prince of Wales Channel. He provisionally 

 associated with this species, as a variety, two specimens that had been dredged at 

 Btation 144, identified some pages farther on (page 167) in a footnote under Actinometra 

 robusta as probably Thursday Island. Antedon decipiens, he said, presents some resem- 

 blances to Carpenter's Antedon pinnijormis. In the Alert report he also described 



