82 ‘* BNDEAVOUR ”” SCIENTIFIC RESULTS. 
oxyconus is not otherwise known from south or west of Shoal- 
haven Bight, and I must confess that the occurrence of this 
specimen taken off Cape Wiles, South Australia, with an 
undoubted Astroconus has shaken my faith in the distinctness 
of the two forms. I should like to believe that the specimen 
under discussion was wrongly labelled, but I cannot see the 
slightest reason for sucha belief. The question of the relation- 
ship of Astroconus and Conocladus is thus reopened and will 
be discusseéd further under the next species, but it is worth 
noting here that up to the present time only eight specimens 
of C. oxyconus are known and two of these are from unknown 
localities, though there is reason to think they are from near 
Port Jackson ; of the other six, two are known to be from off 
Port Jackson, one is from Coogee, two from Shoalhaven 
Bight and one from south of Cape Wiles, South Australia. 
Of forty specimens of C. amblyconus now known, all are from 
New South Wales, while all known specimens of Astroconus 
are from Bass Strait southward and westward. Evidently 
Conocladus is the more northern genus and C. oxyconus is 
much the rarest of the three species. 
Locs.—Shoalhaven Bight, New South Wales, 15-45 fathoms. 
Two specimens. 
Fifteen miles south of Cape Wiles, South Australia. 
Genus Astroconus, Déderlein. 
ASTROCONUS AUSTRALIS (Verrill). 
Astrophyton australe, Verrill, Bull. U.S. Nat. Mus., iii., 1876, 
p. 74. 
Astroconus australis, Déderlein, Abh. math-phys. Klasse K. 
Bayer Akad. Wissensch., ii. Suppl.-Bd., 5, 1911, p. 37. 
This is a remarkable and highly interesting series of this 
little known species. The fifty-five specimens range in size 
from young ones, with disks 11-12 mm. in diameter to 
large adults, whose disks are 45-50 mm. across. Two are 
perfectly tetramerous. The colour is notably diversified, 
ranging from nearly uniform pale gray or almost white, 
through pale gray prettily marked with dull red-purple, 
to dark gray heavily marked with purplish; or the ground 
colour may be yellowish-brown, light or dark, either with- 
out markings of red-purple, or prettily marked with that 
shade; many individuals have the arms very regularly 
banded with the red-purple, but in others there are only 
