A MONOGRAPH OF THE EXISTING CKINOIDS 373 



obtained by the Challenger and the Alert, and also by Dr. John Anderson, of the Cal- 

 cutta Museum, had convinced him that the two types are really identical. He pointed 

 out that Midler hardly ever made any comparison of his species one with another but 

 simply contented himself with descriptions, leaving his readers to determine the real 

 points of difference between his various species. He showed that, as described by 

 Muller, the number of cirrus segments, the characters of the radials and of the brachi- 

 als, the color, and even the size are the same in the two types; Comatula milberti has 

 XXV-XXX cirri, with the spines transverse, while in C. jacquinoti there are XXII 

 cirri, with the spines directed forward. In Comatula milberti the intersyzygial interval 

 is 9-10 muscular articulations, and P 2 , P 3 , and P 4 are the largest, while in C jacquinoti 

 the intersyzygial interval is 4-7 muscular articidations, and the first three or four 

 pinnules are stouter than the others. Carpenter said that no one of these characters, 

 or even the combinations of them, can be regarded as of specific value, especially when 

 we remember that each of Midler's species was based upon a single specimen. He 

 recalled that the type specimen of Comatula jacquinoti had been obtained at Ceram in 

 1841 by the expedition of d'Urville in the Zelee, while the form Muller described under 

 the specific name of milberti had previously received the name from Valenciennes in 

 honor of M. Milbert, of New York, who had given it to the Paris Museum, and it was 

 possibly for this reason that the type was labeled as having come from North America. 

 Carpenter said that under these circumstances Valenciennes, and after him Muller, 

 were perhaps a little predisposed to regard it as distinct from the Comatula jacquinoti of 

 Ceram, which Miiller described along with it in such nearly identical terms. Car- 

 penter felt quite confident that Mdbert's specimen (see page 371) was not obtained any- 

 where on the Atlantic coast of North America. He had seen nothing like it among the 

 West Indian comatulids dredged by the Blake, whde the only species of "Antedon" 

 found on the Atlantic coast were Hathrometra tenella and perhaps Heliometra gla- 

 cialis. All the characters of milberti, Carpenter pointed out, are those of the species 

 of "Antedon" that inhabit the eastern seas, where more or less similar individuals have 

 been obtained at various localities from the Mergui Archipelago to eastern Australia, 

 and he had little doubt that Milbert's specimen had been brought to America from 

 somewhere within this region. He noted that Verrill referred it to the Caribbean 

 fauna, but with a query, while Dujardin and Hup6, who must have seen it for them- 

 selves in the Paris Museum, refer to it as having come from North America. He said 

 that we know nothing respecting any comatulids on the Pacific coast of Central and 

 North America, and he strongly suspected that Mdbert's specimen must have been 

 wrongly labeled. 



In 1891 Dr. Clemens Hartlaub added Carpenter's Antedon laevipinna (=Amphi- 

 metra laevipinna), which Carpenter had considered as valid in the Challenger report, 

 to the synonymy of milberti, and said that Carpenter had already recognized the fact 

 that the two were identical, as he had informed him by letter. 



In 1895 Prof. Rene" Koehler recorded this species from Biliton in the Sunda 

 Islands, and in another paper from the Bay of Amboina, giving notes on the specimens. 



In a first revision of the old genus Antedon published in 1907 I referred milberti 

 and tessellata (accepting the interpretation given them in the Challenger report) to 

 the new genus Himerometra. 



