INTRODUCTION. 7 
57 species taken by Dr. Coppinger are in the Challenger lists.!. The fact is not hard 
to understand, however, when we consider that Dr. Coppinger’s work was all in 
shallow water, from which the naturalists of the Challenger were more or less 
debarred by the very specific purpose of that vessel’s voyage. The two British 
vessels together revealed an echinoderm fauna in Torres Strait of at least 80? 
species, of which more than a third appeared to be endemic or at least confined to 
Torres Strait and the tropical coast of Queensland. 
In 1892 Dr. Richard Semon made Thursday Island his headquarters from Feb- 
ruary 13 to April 4, and with the aid of a sailboat dredged and collected extensively 
in the Strait. His collections of echinoderms were subsequently studied by Déder- 
lein and by Sluiter, the latter reporting on the holothurians. The following species 
were in Semon’s Torres Strait collection: 
CriInowwra: 
Antedon bidens = Oligometrides adeonz. 
elegans =Zygometra elegans. 
microdiscus = Zygometra microdisca. 
Actinometra belli =Comaster belli. 
paucicirra =Comatula rotalaria. 
pectinata =Comatula pectinata. 
solaris | =Comatula solaris. 
ASTEROIDEA: 
Astropecten granulatus. 
zebra. 
Luidia maculata. 
Tconaster longimanus. 
Stellaster incei. 
Goniodiscus pleyadella = Goniodiscaster pleyadella. 
Anthenea tuberculosa (tuberculata on p. 305). 
Pentaceros turritus =Oreaster nodosus. 
Nepanthia brevis. 
Ophidiaster tuberifer =Tamaria tuberifera. 
Retaster cribrosus = Retaster insignis. 
OPHIUROIDEA: 
Ophiopeza conjungens =Pectinura yoldii. 
Pectinura arenosa. 
Ophiactis modesta. 
Amphiura brocki =Amphiodia brocki. 
Ophiotriton semoni =Ophionereis semoni. 
Ophiothela danz. 
Ophiophthirius actinometre. 
OpHIvROIDEA—continued. 
Ophiothrix belli. 
longipeda. 
martensi. 
punctolimbata. 
stelligera. 
striolata. 
Ophiomaza cacaotica. 
EcuinoweEa: 
Leiocidaris bispinosa = Prionocidaris bispinosa. 
Pleurechinus bothryoides = Temnotrema bothryoides 
Salmacis sphroides var. belli =Salmacis belli. 
Echinometra lucunter = Echinometra mathei. 
Arachnoides placenta. 
Laganum decagonale = Peronella orbicularis. 
Echinodiscus auritus var. tenuissima = Echinodiscus 
tenuissimus. 
Breynia australasiz. 
HOLOTHURIOIDEA: 
Synapta glabra =Opheodesoma glabra. 
godeffroyi =Euapta godeffroyi. 
grisea var. alba =Opheodesoma grisea. 
indivisa =Synaptula indivisa. 
similis? =Protankyra similis. 
Colochirus cucumis = Pentacta cucumis. 
Miilleria echinites =Actinopyga echinites. 
lubrica =Actinopyga lubrica. 
Holothuria monocaria. 
pardalis. 
There are thus 7 crinoids, 11 asteroids, 14 ophiurans, 8 echinoids, and 10 holo- 
thurians in the Semon collection, a total of 50 species, but only 7 are undescribed 
forms. Of the 50, 34 were apparently not taken by the Challenger, 35 are not on 
the Alert’s list and 26 do not seem to have been taken by either vessel. Dr. Semon 
thus apparently increased the number of species of echinoderms known from Torres 
Strait to 112, but the revised lists show that there were only 29 species not taken 
by the Challenger, only 28 that the Alert did not get, and only 20 not taken by either 
vessel. Semon thus raised the number of known echinoderms from Torres Strait 
to just 100. It is interesting to note that 12 species were present in all three collec- 
tions, that Semon found no crinoids not in the other collections, but on the other 
1 We now know that the two collections had 17 species in common. 
2 The two lists seem to show 86 different forms, but the corrected lists reduce this number. 
