ANNOTATED LIST. 61 
Inferomarginal plates 16 to 18 of quite diverse sizes and form, making an irregular 
series, not sharply defined on either side; 4 to 8 are more or less swollen and bare like the 
larger superomarginals, and particularly at the tip of arm these swollen inferomarginals 
are conspicuous; but the last 3 to 6, instead of being smooth, have a group of granules on 
their distal sides increasingly coarse and conspicuous until the distalmost are capped by 
3 to 6 tubercle-like grains. Adambulacral plates numerous (55 to 60) and small, squarish; 
each carries 2 (very rarely 3, and distally often only 1) short, wide furrowspinelets with 
rounded tips; generally the adoral spinelet is wider than the other; when a third spinelet 
is present it is adoral to the stouter spinelet of the typical pair. There are no other spinelets 
on the adambulacral plates, and the fine granulation of the abactinal and marginal plates 
not only covers them (as it does the actinolaterals) but it extends up on the outer side of 
the furrow spinelets for fully half their length, thus uniting them basally by the membrane 
that carries the granulation. Actinolateral areas remarkably well developed for a linckiid; 
the first series of actinolateral plates (adjoining the adambulacrals) extends nearly to the 
tip of the ray. A second series reaches the twelfth to fourteenth inferomarginal; a third 
series goes as far as the tenth or eleventh; a fourth may reach the eighth inferomarginal, 
but usually does not extend so far; a fifth series, consisting of half a dozen or more plates, 
is present in all the interradial areas; all the series are fairly regular, but none is perfectly 
so, and there are a good many odd plates intercalated here and there, especially near the 
interradial line; distally the series become disconnected and are indicated by isolated plates. 
There are no actinal and almost no intermarginal papule. No pedicellarie anywhere. Oral 
plates small, completely concealed by the granulation; each carries only 4 or 5 marginal spine- 
lets, which are more or less markedly compressed, wide, and blunt, the innermost biggest. 
Color in life (shown in fig. 5, pl. 6) varied and beautiful beyond description. In the 
preserved specimen, the blue shades have wholly disappeared and the green nearly so, the 
ruby-red has become dull, and the nearly white basal superomarginals are now dingy 
yellowish; the rusty-red has remained with little change. The oral surface in life was 
yellowish-white with bright rusty-red outlining the plates more or less plainly, and in the 
preserved specimen this is changed only in that the ground-color is now light buffy-yellow. 
Holotype: Museum of Comparative Zoélogy No. 2302, southwestern reef-flat, Mer, 
Murray Islands, Torres Strait. 
This exquisite sea-star was found by our engineer, Mr. John W. Mills, among coral 
near the edge of the reef, in shallow water at an unusually low tide, on September 29. 
The most careful search in the same and similar places failed to find another specimen. It 
can not well be referred to any of the previously known species of Ferdina, for the numerous 
small abactinal plates and the very irregular marginal series debar it from both offreti 
and glyptodisca, while the absence of transverse series of bare, tubercular plates on the 
rays distinguish it at once from cancellata. In Grube’s species, moreover, the abactinal 
papul are arranged in very regular series, of which there is no indication in the present 
form. Nevertheless the presence of indistinct transverse series of medium-sized granulated 
plates on the abactinal surface of the rays in ocellata indicates a somewhat nearer relation- 
ship to cancellata than to other members of the genus, and it is by no means impossible 
that a series of specimens would show that what now seem like good specific differences 
are to be accounted for by growth-changes and individual diversity. 
Ferdina kuhlii. 
Scytaster kuhlii Miller and Troschel. 1842. Sys. Ast., p. 36. 
Ferdina kuhlii Sladen. 1889. Challenger Ast., p. 780. 
Nothing is known of this remarkable sea-star beyond what is contained in the original 
description. The type specimen was from Java, measured 5 inches across, and had R=5ar 
It is presumably in the Leyden Museum. Being of so much larger size (R =70 mm. +) 
