MARINE MISCELLANEA. 243 



by the action of the ambulatory limbs and claws and the complete organism thus 

 constitutes itself a sort of animated centre-bit. While the writer had not the good 

 fortune to secure a satisfactory photograph of the Army Crabs on the march, the 

 accompanying snapshot taken of about eighty living individuals engaged in a desperate 

 mele"e, added to the adjacent life-sized drawing, will convey a tolerable idea of the 

 aspect and contour of these Crustacean oddities. In this photographic replica, two 

 contending crab armies are ostensibly striving for the mastery. A near examina- 

 tion will reveal several couples among the general scrimmage engaged in single combat, 

 and one or more encuirassed warriors lying hors de combat on the field of battle. 



In the author's volume on the " Great Barrier Eeef," some space and a 

 coloured plate have been devoted to the description and delineation of a few of the more 

 remarkable members of the Starfish tribe characteristic of that region. The handsome 

 cerulean blue, Linckia Icemgata, the jewel-bestudded Cushion Star, Culcita grex, and 

 the massive Nodose Cushion Star, Oreaster nodosus, are among the more noteworthy 

 types included in that record. As is the case with the fish, however, the colder waters 

 of the Tasmanian seas produce, if not so abundant, yet a goodly number of forms that 

 vie with the tropical species in the brilliancy of their tints. Even in our British seas 

 the gorgeous crimson and scarlet livery of the familiar Sun Star, Solaster papposa, 

 is almost aggressively irradiant with the reflected glow of, as it were, tropic climes. 



The Tasmanian Starfish types that have been chosen for reproduction in 

 Chromo-Plate VIII., have been selected with the object more particularly of 

 illustrating a few of the almost kaleidoscopic series of colour variations to which 

 one particular species is susceptible. The most prominent form in this group, repre- 

 sented by Figures 1 to 6 in the Plate quoted, belongs to the same genus as the little 

 Asterina gibbosa, or " Starlet " of the British coast, but in this type, Asterina calcar, 

 attains to a much more considerable size, and is notable among starfish for its 

 octagonal fundamental structure. With the great majority of starfishes and all other 

 members of the same class, that of the Echinodermata, the number five, or a pentagonal 

 formula, is dominent with reference to both the numbers of arms, angles, and 

 internal structural details. The examples of Asterina calcar here figured were all 

 obtained within a few yards from one another on the rocky foreshore of Spring Bay, on 

 the East Coast of Tasmania. Several plates might have been filled with as conspicuously 

 divergent tinted individuals of the same species. No two examples, indeed, are 

 precisely alike. The latent possibilities possessed by these many-tinted Starfish for 

 utilisation for decorative purposes will possibly occur to the festhetic mind. Surely in 



