344 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
Valenciennes to a genus of fishes. Those who relinquish the claim of Linck’s name of 
Pentaceros for this genus of starfishes on account of 1733 being a pre-Linnean date, and 
on the supposition that the name does not reappear in literature in connection with this 
group of animals until Gray’s time, seem to me to take a most arbitrary view of the 
requirements of nomenclature, and one which I do not consider justifiable in the present 
case. ‘To those who still adhere to the letter rather than the spirit of this canon of name- 
priority, I would point out that Pentaceros was used by Schiilze' exactly in Linck’s sense 
in 1760, after ten editions of the Systema Naturze had been published, and that it was 
also used by Schréter? in 1782. There is consequently no valid reason whatever for 
relinquishing this well-known name, and the onus of employing a term already appro- 
priated will rest with the ichthyologists. 
Chorology of the Genus Pentaceros. 
a. Geographical distribution :— 
AtLantic: Three species between the parallels of 30° N. and 20°S. (A fourth 
species is doubtfully reputed to be from the Adriatic, but its occurrence has 
never been verified.) 
*Pentaceros dorsatus, off the Cape Verde Islands. Pentaceros 
forcipulosus, off the Coast of Guinea (West Africa). Pentaceros 
reticulatus, from the West Indies and Brazil, and extending to 
Freemantle, west coast of Australia. Pentaceros carinatus was 
recorded with doubt to be from the Adriatic, but no second example 
of the species has since been found. 
IypIAN and SoutHerN Oceans: Fourteen or sixteen species between the parallels 
of 30° N. and 40° S. 
Pentaceros mammillatus and Pentaceros tuberculatus, from the 
Red Sea, the former being also found at Mauritius, and the latter off 
the East Coast of Africa. (I have a strong impression that Pentaceros 
tuberculatus is only a synonym, or at most a variety, of Pentaceros 
mammullatus.) Pentaceros hiulcus, Pentaceros turritus, and Pen- 
taceros muricatus, off Mauritius and Zanzibar, the last-named also off 
Madagascar and the Seychelle Islands; both Pentaceros turritus and 
Pentaceros muricatus extend into the Eastern Archipelago, the latter 
1 Betrachtung der versteinerten Seesterne u. ihre Theile. Warschau u. Dresden, 1760, p. 50. 
2 Musei Gottwaldiani Testaceorum, Stellarum marinarum et Corallioram que supersunt Tabulew (Die 
Conchylien, Seesterne und Meergewichse der ehemaligen Gottwaldtischen Naturaliensammlung nach den 
vorhandenen neun und vierzig Kupfertafeln mit einer kurzen Beschreibung begleitet von Johann Samuel 
Schroter). Nurnberg, 1782, p. 58. 
