THE CRINOTDS OF THE INDIAN ()( F.AN. 



1. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



The beautiful and delicate feather stars, often brilUantly coloured, which 

 inhabit the shallow water along the shores of the Indian Ocean, must have been 

 from the earliest times familiar objects to the people living near that sea, and 

 probably attracted to themselves, from their exceeding grace and varied hues, 

 more or less attention. In Japan, where they are much less plentiful, they have 

 long been known, and their beauty has induced the fisliermen to bestow upon 

 them the name " komachi," originally borne by an exceptionally well-favoured lady 

 of the court upwards of one thousand years ago. The stalked crinoids, however, 

 are all at the present time inhabitants of comparatively deep water and their 

 capture is, as a rule, under ordinary circumstances more or less accidental. There 

 are but few records of their capture in the Indo-Pacific region before the day of 

 cable-ships and specially equipped surveying steamers; but in the West Indies 

 they have been known at least since the time of Linn^^tts (1761), while in Japan, 

 where fishing is commonly carried on in very deep water, they are found with 

 sufficient frequency to have received from the fishermen the vernacular appellation 

 of " bird's foot." 



Considering their curious form and elegant build, features which would place 

 them in the first rank as curios, the introduction of the common Indian species 

 into the cabinets of European naturalists was curiously slow ; whereas the Mediter- 

 ranean oomatulid (Antedon mediterranea) was well described and figured in 1592, 

 it is not until 1711 that we find an Indian species mentioned in the literature. 

 In that year Petiveb figured his " Stella chinensis perlegens,'' from a broken 

 specimen of Gapillaster multiradiata. Twenty-two years afterwards Linck, in his 

 magnificent monograph upon the sea-sbars, figured two more multibrachiate 

 species, one a species of a genus of Mariametridse, the other of a genus of Comas- 

 teridee, calling them Caput-Medusce cinereum (=Dichrometra palmata, according 

 to Professor Johannes MUller) and Caput-Medusce hrunnum respectively. 



In 1758 Linnaeus proposed the names Asterias pectinata and Asferias mul- 

 tiradiata , giving as the habitat of both, "Indian Seas." Asterias pectinata was 

 a composite including Antedon bifida, A. mediterranea, and the Stella chinensis 

 perlegens of Vetiver (=Capillaster multiradiata). None of these, however, came 

 from the Indian Ocean ; but the discrepancy is explained by the existence of a 

 type-specimen at Limd which is not even genericaUy identical with any one of them , 

 belonging to the species now known as Comatula pectinata ! Asterias pectinata 



