no. 1S08. RECENT AFRICAN CRINOIDS— CLARK. 3 



Carpenter identified with it a specimen which the Challenger dredged 

 at Bahia, and figured both this specimen and the type in the Cliallenger 

 report on the Comatulse. The Cliallenger specimen is a young exam- 

 ple of Tropiometra picta, but the type-specimen obviously belongs to 

 the Antedonidse and to the genus Antedon. Nothing like it has 

 since been found on the American side of the Atlantic. 



E. Von Martens in 1869 recorded from the Red Sea the Alecto 

 palmata of Miiller, which had originally been described from India, 

 and at the same time recorded Comatula Solaris from Zanzibar. The 

 determination of the former was correct, but the latter appears to 

 have been in reality Tropiometra carinata. Von Martens did not dis- 

 cover that the species recorded by Leuckart as Comatula leucomelas 

 is the same as the one given by himself as Comatula palmata. 



Sir C. Wyville Thomson, in his preliminary report upon the crinoids 

 of the Porcupine expedition and in his semipopular work The Depths 

 of the Sea, published in 1873, as well as in The Atlantic, published in 

 1877, touches upon the fauna of the Mediterranean, but the only 

 crinoid he mentions from the vicinity of Africa is " Rhizocrinus 

 lojfotensis," which was dredged by the Swedish frigate Josephine on 

 the Josephine Bank. 



In 1878 Pourtales and in 1879 Rathbun discussed at considerable 

 length specimens of Tropiometra carinata from Zanzibar, comparing 

 them with specimens of T. picta from the coast of Brazil. 



In 1879 also Edgar A. Smith described in detail a new comatulid, 

 Comatula indica, from the island of Rodriguez, which remains to-day 

 the only crinoid known from that locality. 



GreefF, while visiting the island of Rolas, in the Gulf of Guinea, 

 found some crinoids there which he identified with the species inhabit- 

 ing southern Europe. Carpenter was inclined to consider them as 

 being in reality the Antedon diibenii of Bohlsche, but it seems probable 

 that they are identical with the Antedon hupferi of Hartlaub, which 

 is closely related to that species. 



DeLoriol, discussing the echinoderms of Mauritius in 1883, includes, 

 as did Michelin, Tropiometra carinata. 



The work of the two French steamers, the Travailleur and the 

 Talisman, had resulted in the discovery of many interesting crinoids 

 off the coasts of southern Europe and northwestern Africa. Scat- 

 tered references to these are found in the writings of E. Perrier, Cap- 

 tain Parfait, de Folin, and of the Marquis de Filhol, but they are 

 mostly very indefinite and very unsatisfactory. Interest in these 

 crinoids appears to have soon died out, and no detailed report upon 

 them was ever prepared. 



Prof. F. Jeffrey Bell, in listing the echinoderms obtained by the 

 Alert in the western Indian Ocean, records (1884) immature speci- 

 mens of a species of u Actinometra^ from the Amirante Islands. 



