77 



finally dried in the sun. In no ease are they submitted to 

 the action of corrosive alkali solutions. It has been objected, 

 with regard to the preservation of corals by exposing them 

 for sometime to the action of rain or running water, that the 

 finest details of the skeleton are liable to be dissolved away 

 to some extent by the action of the carbonic acid in the 

 water. But I found, on my visit to Rdmesvaram Island 

 in 1889, that the structural details of various delicate corals 

 (Asfrceopora, CypJiastrcea, etc.), which I had left discarded on 

 the sand in the " compound " of the bungalow twelve months 

 previously, were, to no appreciable extent, damaged for 

 purposes of identification, though they had, in the interval, 

 been freely exposed to the action of a heavy monsoon and a 

 cyclone. 



ECHINODEEMATA. 



A report on a collection of Echinoderms, which I made in 

 the years 1886-87 at Hdmesvaram island and Tuticorin, by 

 Prof. F. Jeffrey Bell, has been published in the Proceedings 

 of the Zoological Society, June 19, 1888, wherein the writer 

 states that " I may be allowed to remind the student of the 

 recent appearance of a memoir on the Echinoderm-fauna 

 of the island of Ceylon.^ Shortly after the distribution of 

 that memoir my respected correspondent, M. de Loriol, was 

 kind enough to wi'ite and tell me of four other species of 

 Echinoids, all of which had been collected at Aripo by 

 M. Alois Humbert." Of these four species (Phyllacanthus 

 anmdifera, Tetnnopleiinis reynaudi, Olypeader humilis, and 

 Laganum depressiim) C. hmnilis and L. depressum have been 

 found by me off the Indian coast of the Gulf of Manaar, 



Only two new species have been discovered among my 

 collections, viz., an Ophiuroid, Pectinura intermedia, and an 

 Asteroid, Oreaster {Pentaceros) thurstoni, of which the latter 

 is a very common shallow- water species very variable both • 

 in its characters and colour. Since the publication of Prof. 

 Bell's Report several species, not recorded there, have been 

 found in my subsequent visits to the Gulf of Manaar, bring- 

 ing the total number up to fifty-eight. 



The majority of the specimens were found in shallow- 

 water near the shore, but some, e.g., Oreaster {Pentaceros) 

 Uncki, Linckia Icevigata, Colochirns quadrangularis, and Astro- 

 phyton, sp. (of which a single imperfect specimen was found 



' Scientific Transaction* qf the Moyal Dublin Society (2), III, p. 643 et seq. 



