NA TURE 



561 



THE ZOOLOGICAL RESULTS OF THE 

 "CHALLENGER" EXPEDITION. 



Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. 

 " Challenger'''' during the Years 1873-76, under the 

 command of Captain George S. Nares, R.N, F.R.S., 

 (ind the late Captain Frank T. Thomson, R.N. Pre- 

 pared under the superintendence of the late Sir C. 

 Wyville Thomson, Knt., F.R.S., and now of John 

 Murray, one of the Naturalists of the Expedition. 

 Zoology— Vol. XXVI. Published by Order of Her 

 Majesty's Government. (Printed for Her Majesty's 

 Stationery Office, and sold by Eyre and Spottiswoode, 

 1888.) 



r PHE first memoir in Vol. XXVI. is the second part of 

 -L the Report on the Crinoidea collected during the 

 voyage, and is by Dr. P. Herbert Carpenter. The first 

 part treated of the ; Stalked Crinoids : this treats of the 

 Comatulidae. 



Since Midler's well-known memoir on the genera and 

 species of the Comatulidae, no systematic work on this 

 interesting group has until now made its appearance. 

 Several new species have no doubt during these forty 

 years been described, but with the publication of each 

 the subject became more and more confused, and the 

 painstaking and laborious revision of the known species 

 forms by no means the least important portion of the 

 present memoir. In it we find the result of many years' 

 careful study of the " Comatulae," based not only on the 

 collections made by the Challenger, but on those made by 

 other Expeditions in various seas, and on the examination 

 of almost all the types to be found in European or 

 American Museums. 



Lamarck's familiar and appropriate name Comatula is 

 retained by the author as the name of a family of Neo- 

 crinoids, which now contains six genera with recent 

 species, viz. Antedon, Actinometra, Atelecrinus, Eudio- 

 crinus, Promachocrinus, and Thaumatocrinus : of these 

 genera over 180 species are now known, a large advance 

 beyond the 35 species referred to by Miiller, and of the 

 former number 88 are described in detail as new from 

 the Challenger collections. The author remarks that even 

 this large number is considerably lower than that men- 

 tioned in his preliminary Report, but adds that the large 

 experience gained by the examination of numerous speci- 

 mens has obliged him often to write under one specific 

 name forms which at first had seemed most distinct. 



This Report is morphological, as naturally the oppor- 

 tunity was wanting for dealing with details of development. 

 We have first a general introduction, in which there 

 is a sketch of the progress made from the days of de 

 Freminville ; next a chapter on the centro-dorsal plate 

 and calyx, in which there is no lack of controversial 

 matter. The errors of Vogt and Yung might better 

 have been referred to in footnotes, and the continuance 

 of the author's descriptions would not then have been 

 interrupted. It scarcely concerns the reader who is 

 studying Carpenter to know what " the student of Vogt 

 and Yung" would or would not learn from their writings. 

 Vol. xxxviii. — No. 989. 



The chapter on the geographical and bathymetrical 

 distributions is an important one. Our present knowledge 

 of the recent species is too imperfect for any generaliza- 

 tion respecting their geographical distribution or the 

 origin of specific types. The species occur in immense 

 abundance over certain large areas, such as the Caribbean 

 Sea, and more especially the Eastern Archipelago and 

 Australasia. The species of other seas have been made 

 known to us by the dredgings of the Challenger ; and other 

 collections, both from the Arctic and sub-Arctic seas and 

 from the Southern Indian Ocean, have yielded some valu- 

 able information. Although abundant near the coasts in the 

 Arctic Ocean and on both sides of the North Atlantic, no 

 species has been dredged at a greater depth than 800 

 fathoms in the Atlantic, nor were any forms met with in 

 either of the Challenger' s two traverses of the North Atlantic ; 

 and, while one species is recorded from Madeira and the 

 Canaries, none have as yet been found at the Azores, 

 Cape Verdes, or Bermudas. The two Mediterranean 

 species range as far north as Scotland. In the Florida 

 Channel, and in the Caribbean Sea, Comatulae abound. 

 None are known from the African coast, between Cape 

 Verde and the Cape of Good Hope, except one species met 

 with at the equatorial island Rolas. The only Actinometra 

 common to both sides of the Atlantic is found at St. 

 Paul's Rocks. Some few of the Caribbean species ex- 

 tend therefrom down the South American coasts to Cape 

 Frio ; while, in mid-Atlantic, species have been dredged 

 at moderate depths off Ascension, St. Helena, and Tristan 

 d'Acunha. Closely allied to the North Atlantic species 

 are those found at Heard Island and Kerguelen. Various 

 species are found at Simon's Bay, Natal, Madagascar, 

 Mauritius, Seychelles, Zanzibar, Red Sea, Kurrachee, 

 Ceylon, Bay of Bengal ; while in the seas of the great 

 Eastern | Archipelago they occur in most bewildering 

 confusion. No species as yet have been taken on the 

 coasts of New Zealand — though one or two approach the 

 East Cape of the North Island — nor at Tasmania. Two 

 species are recorded from the Straits of Magellan, and 

 single species are known to occur at Chili and Peru ; but 

 there are none apparently on the western shores of North 

 America. In the Pacific the species are extremely rare. 

 While essentially littoral forms, three species were found 

 at depths of from 345 to 755 fathoms, from the green mud 

 off the Japanese coasts ; and one, Antedon abyssicola, 

 from a depth of 2900 fathoms, at Station 244 in the North 

 Pacific. 



So far as present knowledge goes, the Comatulidae first 

 appeared in the time of the Middle Lias, and were thus 

 of later date than the Pentacrinidas ; they were fairly 

 abundant in the Jurassic and Cretaceous epochs , espe- 

 cially so at certain periods. The recent forms occupy 

 an immensely more extended area than the extinct ones, 

 for, with the exception of a species of Antedon from 

 Algiers, and another from Syria, no fossil Comatulid has 

 been found out of Europe, not even in the Indian Ter- 

 tiaries, otherwise so rich in Echinoderm remains ; and 

 while none are to be found in America, it is not with- 

 out interest to note that Pentacrinoid remains are very 

 common at certain horizons of the Jura Trias over wide 

 areas of the western territories, thereby indicating that 

 the conditions of that age were not altogether unfavour- 

 able to the existence of Crinoid life. The Middle Lias 



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