REPORT ON THE OPHIURANS 



Collected by the Barbados-Antigua Expedition from 

 the University of Iowa in 1918 



Austin H. Clark 



Curator, Division of Echinoderms, U. S. National Museum 



PREFACE 



By a fortunate combination of circumstances it happened that 

 just before and during the early dredging operations of the U. S. 

 Coast Survey between 1867 and 1879 (by the steamers "Cor- 

 win," "Hassler" and "Blake"), which were the first intensive 

 deep sea investigations ever undertaken, interest in the ophiurans 

 had reached a pitch of intensity quite comparable to that of the 

 revival of the past ten years centering in the Indo-Pacific and 

 Antarctic, and new material was studied and described as rap- 

 idly as it was obtained. The two authors of those days chiefly 

 interested in the West Indian ophiurans were Theodore Lyman 

 of Harvard, who studied the ophiurans collected by the ships of 

 the Coast Survey, and later those of the "Challenger," and 

 Christian F. Liitken of Copenhagen to whom were sent a large 

 number of specimens from the Danish West Indies, mostly from 

 St. Thomas, collected by A. H. Riise. As many of Riise's speci- 

 mens were later also sent to Lyman, the latter was enabled to 

 study authentic examples of many of Liitken 's species from the 

 original locality. 



The completeness of the early collections and the thoroughness 

 and accuracy with which the early authors worked are attested 

 by Professor Kcehler's report upon the ophiurans secured by the 

 "Albatross" in the West Indies (1914) and by Dr. Hubert 

 Lyman Clark's memoir on the ophiurans of Porto Rico (1902) 

 and catalogue of known ophiurans (1915) in which a negligible 

 number of new Caribbean types are described, and almost none 

 of the earlier species placed in synonymy. 



*Published with the permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 



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