102 SVEN' LOVEN, ON TIIE ECIIINOIDEA DESCRIBED BY LINN^US. 



esculcntus, ^vas undoubtedly from tlie west coast of Sweden, 

 whilc tlie remaining thirteen Avcre all inhabitants of the tro- 

 pical scas of the old world, mostly thosc of the East Indies. 

 But from that region not a singlc species of Arbacia has been 

 known with any degrec of certainty. Duxker was surely de- 

 ceived when he set down as from Australia the species after- 

 wards described by Troschel as Arbacia australis; just as the 

 A. sequitubercitlata Bly. has beeu oftered me as >from Chinav. 



On the tenth plate of his third volume Seba gave several 

 fij>-ures of Arbaciai that ous'ht to have arrested tlie atteution 

 of L1XN.EUS, had not, in 1760, when he lirst saw the book, 

 time effaced the recollection of the specimens he had described 

 eio^ht vears before. Allowino- for the rather conventional and 

 sketchy manncr of executiou of Seba's engravings in general, 

 his figures 15 a, b, appcar to have rendered in a tolerable de- 

 gree the characters of their originals, and if these are songht 

 for among the species at present known, there is none that 

 answers better than the A. Lixula of LiNN^EUS. It is as if a 

 speciraen intermediate between his largest specimen and that 

 of Klein had been lying before the artist; there is the same 

 form of the ambulacra, the same smallness of the tubercles. 

 The description, deplorably inadequate as every other in that 

 work, has nothing but a Avorthless remark upon the magnitude 

 of the stoma, and an exaggerated statement about the colou- 

 ring, in which crimson is said to be prevalent, as in bleached 

 specimens like e amone the Linnean types. 



Regardino- the habitat of the obiects figured in Seba's 

 book a hint is sometimes given in the text, but in this instance 

 it is all but löst in confusion. Ont of the first tifteen num- 

 bers of the plate, three or perhaps four, 1, 2, 6, 7^), are 

 »African», two: 3, 4, »indigenous>^, and one : 5, ^from the East 

 Indies», while the remaininsf nine, among them the four ligures 

 of Arbaciie, are without anv localitv. Immediatelv after the 

 few words touching the fig. 15, comes this line: The eight 

 species hereafter following have been sent me from the coast 

 of Guinea in Africa». There are just eight more numbers on 

 the plate, IG to 23, and these, accordingly, ought to have 

 either no habitat affixed, or one that falls within the Bight 

 of Guinea. But only four, the three Echinometrae, 16, 17, 18, 



') No 7, an Echinoneus, is gLveu under the same heacl as No G which 

 is »African». 



