PRELIMINARY NOTICE OF A COLLECTION OF RECENT 

 CRINOIDS FROAI THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 



By AUSTIN HOBART CLARK 



Collaborator, Department of Marine Invertebrates, U. S. National 



Museum 



The first consignment of crinoids received from the United States 

 Fisheries steamer Albatross, now engaged in work among the Phil- 

 ippine Islands, proves to be a collection of more than usual interest. 

 Not only does it contain a remarkably large number of new and 

 interesting forms, but many species, heretofore known only from 

 single more or less imperfect specimens, are represented. 



The littoral comatulids of the Indo-Pacific region have already 

 received more attention than any other group of recent crinoids ; 

 Seba, Linck, and Petiver described and figured species, upon which 

 species Linnaeus bestowed binomial names ; Lamarck diagnosed a 

 number of additional species in 1816, and Miiller several more in 

 1841 and 1846. Since then Carpenter and Bell have made great ad- 

 ditions to our knowledge, the former, especially, in his magnificent 

 Challenge}' monograph ; in 1893 Hartlaub made the East Indian lit- 

 toral forms the subject of a most excellent memoir; and in 1895 ^"^ 

 1898 Koehler and Doderlein published important papers dealing 

 with them. In view of all this previous work, it is with no little 

 surprise that I find in the present, mainly littoral, collection the new 

 forms outnumbering those already known, if we except only the 

 family Comasteridae. 



Some time ago, while discussing the distribution of the recent 

 crinoids, I mentioned that the entire Australian coast, southern as 

 well as northern, was inhabited by purely tropical species, and be- 

 longed in my "Indo-Pacific — Japanese" region. I did this with con- 

 siderable hesitation ; for the genus Ptilometra, characteristic of 

 southern Australia, had never been taken elsewhere, though all the 

 other genera range at least to Singapore, and most of them as far as 

 Japan. It is, therefore, with peculiar satisfaction that I am now 

 enabled to announce the discovery of Ptilometra north of the equa- 

 tor, and to reafiirm, without the possibility of contradiction, the iden- 

 tity of the southern Australian crinoid fauna with that of the tropical 

 East Indies. 



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