0)1 Indian Deep-sea Dredging. 427 



hump is not yet exliausted. Mouth and fore-gut also have now 

 become move spacious tlian before, and the mucous membrane 

 of the latter exhibits distinct longitudinal folds. Moreover, 

 the fore-gut by this time (eighteenth day) possesses a layer 

 of distinct circular muscle-tibres, which appear to me to be 

 in no way derived froin cells of the mesenchyma, but from 

 the enterocoele-cells which lie closely upon the fore-gut. 

 From the mid-gut an anterior portion is constricted otf, which 

 becomes the stomach of tlie adult, but as yet possesses 

 muscular fibres in its wall just as little as does the remainder 

 of the mid-gut. In the later stages also wliich were examined 

 by me I failed to trace muscle-fibres in stomach and mid-gut, 

 while in the end- gut from the forty-fifth day onwards longi- 

 tudinal muscle- fibres were distinctly recognizable. 



LTI. — Natural History Notes from II.M. Indian Marine 

 Survey Steamer ^Investigator^'' Commander R. F. Hoskyn^ 

 Ii.A'., commanding. — Series IT., No. 1. On the Results of 

 Deep-sea Dredging during the Season 1890-91. By J. 

 Wood-Mason, Superintendent of the Indian Museum, and 

 Professor of Comparative Anatomy in the Medical College 

 of Bengal, and A. Alcock, M.B., Surgeon I.M.S., Sur- 

 geon-Naturalist to the Survey. 



[Continued from p. 362.] 



[riate XVII.J 



Phylum ECHINODERMA. 



Class ASTEEOIDEA. 



The Asteroidea form a good collection, which we have 

 arranged under twenty-three species, sixteen genera, and eight 

 families. Of these twenty-three forms nine appear to corre- 

 spond with species described in the ' Challenger ' Report, 

 while fourteen seem to be new to science. 



Except as regards life-coloration and distribution we have 

 not been able to learn anything very new concerning tlie 

 Asteroidea of the deep sea. Most of them appear to live, like 

 their shallow-water relatives, upon Mollusca. In the stomachs 

 of some of our specimens the carapaces of Crustacea have been 

 found. The Porcellanasterida3, so far as our rather limited 



