PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.40. 



script name of Comatula leucomelas, but I have not been able to find 

 that he mentioned it anywhere in his works. In 1833 Leuckart 

 came across his specimens in the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfort 

 on Main and published the name, together with the locality, though 

 without any diagnosis. 



Leuckart was the first to describe the curious parasitic worms 

 belonging to the genus Myzostoma with which crinoids are usually 

 infested, his attention having been first called to them by mistaking 

 one for a madreporic plate. In discussing the genus Myzostoma he 

 mentions a multiradiate comatulid from the Red Sea, which, follow- 

 ing Audouin, he identifies as Comatula multiradiata, but which von 

 Graff, acting on the advice of P. H. Carpenter, has suggested was 

 probably an example of Heterometra savignii, the species to which 

 Audouin' s Comatula multiradiata has always been referred. 



In the Iconographie du Regne Animal, published by Guerin-Mene- 

 ville from 1828-1837, there are two figures 1 supposed to represent 

 the species described as Comatula carinata from Mauritius. Possibly 

 the first does represent this species, though it looks more like some 

 species of Antedon; but the second (2a) appears to be a species of 

 AmpTiimetra, and agrees fairly well with A. discoidea from northern 

 Australia and the East Indies. There is a specimen of Ampliimetra 

 discoidea (labeled by P. H. Carpenter Antedon milberti, var. dibra- 

 chiata) in the Paris Museum from which I suspect the figure was 

 drawn. 



In 1841 Johannes Muller described his Alecto savignii, which was 

 based upon specimens which had been brought from the Red Sea by 

 Hempricht and Ehrenberg, now in the Berlin Museum, and he also 

 identified Savigny's figure, which had been called Comatula multi- 

 radiata by Audouin, as this species. Two years later he described 

 Alecto wahlbergii from specimens brought by Wahlberg from Port 

 Natal, which he examined at the Stockholm Museum. 



Michelin in 1845 noted the occurrence of Comatula carinata at 

 Mauritius. His specimens are now in the Paris Museum. 



In 1849 the comprehensive monograph of Muller, completing his 

 studies on the comatulids, gave a summary of the knowledge in regard 

 to African species at that date. Practically the same account was 

 given in 1862 by Dujardin and Hupe in their monograph on the 

 so-called Zoophytes. 



Bohlsche in 1866 described as new a curious little comatulid from 

 the coast of Brazil which he had been unable to identify with any 

 previously known species. He called it, in compliment to the 

 justly famous Norwegian naturalist of that name, Antedon dubenii. 

 This species has been the cause of considerable confusion. P. H. 



i Zoophytes, pi. 1, figs. 2, 2a. 



