REPORT ON THE CRINOIDEA. 303 
both the generic names Cenocrinus and Neocrinus and described the type as Pentacrinus 
asteria, Linn., as Liitken had previously done. 
It was clearly right to return to the specific name employed by Linnzeus, although he 
was utterly at fault as regards the generic position of the type. But every writer on the 
subject, myself included, has used a wrong termination to the specific name. Linnzeus 
wrote Isis asteria, which appears as Isis asterias in Miiller’s edition of the Systema 
Nature (Bd. ii. p. 742), published at Nuremberg in 1775; and this has been quoted 
by de Blainville and others. But when the species came to be referred to Pentacrinus, and 
the Linnean specific name was restored. in place of caput-Meduse, it should have been 
written Pentacrinus asterius, the expression Pentacrinus asteria, used by Liitken, Thom- 
son, and myself being a false concord ; for it is evident that the etymology of Linnzeus’s 
name Isis asteria is the adjective dorépios, starry, and not the noun Asteria, cat’s eye. 
I am indebted for this tardy correction to the critical acumen of my friend Prof. F. 
Jeffrey Bell. But as it did not reach me till all the plates illustrating the type and most 
of the morphological section of the Report’ had been printed off, I have been unable to 
avail myself of it as fully as I should like to have done. 
It is somewhat curious that this species, which for the greater part of a century was 
the only known living representative of the genus, should be comparatively so little 
known at the present time. But one specimen of it was ever dredged by the ‘“ Blake,” 
whereas Pentacrinus decorus was obtained by the hundred ;: and even stem-fragments 
were very rarely met with, One specimen was taken by Captain Cole of the telegraph 
steamer “ Investigator,” in 320 fathoms off Saba Island ; and it is now in the zoological 
collection of the Natural History Museum. The agents of Mr. Damon of Weymouth 
have been successful in procuring several excellent specimens, which have been bought by 
different museums, but I have not been able to examine more than a very few of them. 
The preceding description is based upon the characters presented by the following 
examples of the type :—A. Miller's original specimen from Nevis, now in the geological 
department of the Natural History Museum. B. One dry specimen and two others in 
spirit, all in the zoological department of the same museum. C. One dry specimen in 
the Hunterian collection of the Royal College of Surgeons. D. Two dry specimens 
obtained by Dr. Carpenter and Sir Wyville Thomson from Mr. Damon of Weymouth. I 
have not made a personal inspection of Guettard’s original specimen, but when Mr. Perey 
Sladen was in Paris for the purpose of investigating the collection of Asterids in the 
museum, he was permitted by Prof. Perrier to examine it on my behalf; and from the 
notes of its characters which he was kind enough to give me, together with the original 
figures of Guettard, I have no doubt that it is a fairly normal specimen of the type. 
Pentacrinus asterius is much more robust than any of the other recent species of the 
genus, none of which have such wide stem-joints, though these are not so large as in some 
fossil species. The stem also seems to grow to a greater length than that of any other recent 
