Miscellaneous. 435 



my attention was called by Professor Beyrich. The larger spines 

 along the dorsal line of the arms in the dried specimen are partly 

 erect and partly depressed, which certainly could arise only from 

 local differences in the shrinking during the desiccation of the speci- 

 men, but still produces an impression that the spines must have been 

 moveable during life — a view which is further borne out both by the 

 smoothness of the base of the spine and by that of the surface to 

 which it is attached, although this is surrounded by granules, and 

 from it even the dry spines may be very easily detached. Gray also 

 describes the spines as mobile. 



In living Oreasters of the Indian Archipelago, however, I have 

 never noticed any mobility of the spines independent of their point of 

 attachment, but I ascribed their convergence after death to the 

 locally unequal shrinking of the entire surface ; nevertheless in 

 these Indian species I do not now find the spines so distinctly dif- 

 ferentiated from their point of attachment as in the Central American 

 species. 



2. Astropecten ccelacanthus, n. sp. 



Five arms ; radius of the disk to that of the arms about as 1 to 3. 

 Marginal plates twenty-four on each arm. Ambulacral papillae in 

 several rows, the outer ones larger, all somewhat compressed and 

 obtuse. From the scaly covering of the ventral plates larger fiat spines 

 project everywhere, and near the margin especially these group 

 themselves in rows parallel to the margin, consisting of three spines 

 for each inferior plate ; on the margin itself there is on each of these 

 plates one spine. These marginal spines are small and fiat in the 

 interbrachial angles, as also at the apex of the arms ; in the middle 

 of the arms they are large, flat, slightly sabre-shaped, and bent round 

 on the free margins in such a manner as to present a spoon-like 

 cavity, directed downwards and backwards (that is to say, towards 

 the interbrachial angle). The superior marginal plates are twice as 

 deep as broad, densely granulated, with a few (2-4) larger tuber- 

 cles, which stand in a transverse row, and of which the innermost 

 (superior) especially are never wanting. The back, arms, and disk 

 within these marginal plates are thickly set with paxillse ; in the 

 middle of the arms this space is scarcely twice as broad as the height 

 of one of the superior marginal plates. 



Radius of the disk 17, of the arms 49 millim. ; height in the 

 middle 8 millim. Captured and sent with the preceding species. — 

 Monatsber. der Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin, January 1865, p. 56. 



Occurrence of Calluna vulgaris in Newfoicndland. 



Mr. Murray, late of the Geological Survey of Canada, and now 

 engaged in a survey of Newfoundland, has brought to Montreal spe- 

 cimens of this plant, which were collected by Judge Robinson on the 

 east coast of Newfoundland, near Fenyland (lat. 47°, long. 52° 50'), 

 and which are stated to be from a small patch of the plai t not more 

 than three yards square. — Silliman's Journal, March 1865. 



