REPORT ON THE ASTEROIDEA. 309 
irregularity. On a moderate-sized plate there are about five granules in a line. Several 
of the adambulacral plates on each side of the furrow have a small pedicellaria with three 
or four valves, which are squamiform and very little longer than the height of the gran- 
ules. The pedicellaria is usually situated in the first line of granules behind the furrow 
series of spinelets, and lies between the adoral margin of the plate and the middle of the 
line. 
The actinal intermediate plates are square or subrhomboid, and are covered with rather 
large, uniform, semiglobular granules, definitely spaced ; a few of the plates in each area 
bear a small valvate pedicellaria, the jaws of which are but slightly higher than the 
granules, but are twice as broad. They are placed over a puncture in the plate, and are 
surrounded by a small circular scrobicule, devoid of granules. 
The armature of the mouth-plates is granuliform on the outer part of the mouth, and 
here scarcely distinguishable from those on the actinal intermediate plates, but the gran- 
ules increase in size as they approach the inner end of the plates, and as they assume the 
true spinelet form they also become subprismatic in shape. 
Locality.—Station 125. Off the western coast of Brazil, near the mouth of the Rio 
San Francisco. September 12, 1873. Lat. 10° 46’ 0”S., long. 36° 2’0” W. Depth 1200 
fathoms. Red mud. Surface temperature 77°°0 Fahr. 
Remarks.—Although I have felt some doubt as to the propriety of regarding this form 
as a distinct species, | do not see my way to rank it merely as a variety of Nymphaster 
grotentus. The much shorter ray, the smaller number of granules on the abactinal plates, 
the absence of any external spinelets in the armature of the adambulacral plates, and the 
substitution in their place of numerous granules, all seem contradictory to such a view. 
Indeed the characters enumerated are quite at variance with what one would expect to 
find in a merely larger development of the form described as Nymphaster protentus, espe- 
cially when regard is had to the relative characters of that species and Nymphaster albidus 
described in the preceding pages. 
Careful study of the three forms, Nymphaster protentus from Station 3, Nymphaster 
albidus from the Cape Verde Islands, and Nymphaster basilicus from Station 125, lead to 
the almost inevitable conclusion that if the small Nymphaster albidus should ultimately 
prove to be the young of Nymphaster protentus, the specimen under notice (Nymphaster 
basilicus) cannot be a merely larger-crown example of that form, as the characters it 
presents do not accord with the scheme of growth stages indicated by the other two forms ; 
and vice versd, if this large individual (Nymphaster basilicus) be considered as the adult 
form of the type Nymphaster protentus, the small specimen Nymphaster albidus, from the 
Cape Verde Islands, must be considered as an independent species. 
Under these circumstances the course that has seemed to me to be the least open to 
objection has been that of ranking the three forms, provisionally at least, as separate 
species. 
