a 
REPORT ON THE CRINOIDEA. 399 
glass. The heads soon curled over and showed a decided disposition to drop off. At 
a haul made soon after we got more, and being afraid to put so many of them in the 
tank together I tried to delude the animals into the idea that they were in their native 
temperature by putting them into ice-water. This worked well, although some of them 
became exasperated, and shed some of their arms. They lived in the ice-water two 
hours, until I transferred them to the tank. They moved their arms one at a time. 
Some of the lilies were white, some purple, some yellow; the latter was the colour of 
the smaller and more delicate ones.” Mr, Alexander Agassiz! records that “ our collection 
of Pentacrini is quite extensive ; we found them at Montserrat, St. Vincent, Grenada, 
Guadeloupe, and Barbados, in several places, in such numbers that on one occasion we 
brought up no less than one hundred and twenty-four at a single haul of the bar and 
the tangles. We must, of course, have swept over actual forests of Pentacrini crowded 
together, much as we find the fossil Pentacrini on slabs. I have nothing to add to the 
general description of their movements given by Captain Sigsbee, with the exception of 
their use of the cirri placed along the stem. These they move more rapidly than the 
arms, and use them as hooks to catch hold of neighbouring objects, and, on account of 
their sharp extremities, they are well adapted to retain their hold. The stem itself 
passes slowly from a rigid vertical attitude to a curved or even drooping position.” 
Although the dredgings of the “ Blake” have shown that Pentacrinus decorus 1s 
extremely abundant in the neighbourhood of several of the West Indian Islands, it does 
not appear to have been discovered till a century after Pentacrinus asterius. Its 
distinctness from that type was first recognised by Mr. Damon of Weymouth, who 
procured an example of it from the seas of the Outer Antilles. Its occurrence was 
recorded by the late Sir Wyville Thomson in a popular article on Sea Lilies, which 
appeared in the Intellectual Observer for August 1864, but he published no further 
description of it before his death. When he first noted its discovery he seems to have 
been unacquainted with the description of Pentacrinus miller by Oersted, published 
six years previously; for he spoke of Pentacrinus asterius and Pentacrinus decorus as 
the only two known living species of Stalked Crinoids. But in the following year? he 
referred to Pentacrinus miilleri as well, Liitken’s Memoir having appeared in the 
interval; so that he evidently regarded Pentacrinus decorus and Pentacrinus miillere 
as distinct species. 
Later on, however, as I have described above, he came to the conclusion that his 
Pentacrinus decorus was identical with Oersted’s type,? and he seems to have held this 
view till his death. For he wrote “ Pentacrinus miilleri, Oersted,” on a copy of 
Pl. XXXIV. This represents a specimen which he had obtained from Sir Rawson Rawson, 
and it is totally different from Pentacrinus miilleri, as is evident from a glance at Liitken’s 
1 Bull. Mus. Comp. Zodl., vol. v., No. 14, p. 296. 2 Phil. Trans., vol. cly., 1865, p. 542. 
3 Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. vii. p. 766; and The Depths of the Sea, p. 442, 
