250 Miscellaneous, 



two specimens (one adult and the other young) of that singular 

 Echinodcrm, or soft sea-urchin, hclonging to the Dladema family, 

 which was procured last year [1SG9J in nearly GO degrees of North 

 Latitude. It will soon bo described by Professor Wyville Thomson 

 under the name of Calveria Jii/stri.r." Thus was the name CaJveria 

 h)/striv transferred from an Asteroid to an Echinoid. The Report 

 for 1S69 mentions the ''large Echiiiid allied to Astro/)yga" on 

 p. 450 ; from this passage and from p. 155 of Wyville Thomson's 

 ' Depths of the Sea' (Loudon, 1873), it appears that the original 

 specimen of the Echinoid Calveria hi/atriv was dredged on Sunday, 

 5 September, at Station 89, 59= 38" N., 7° 4G" W. 



It is a curious thing that three such men as Carpenter, Gwyn 

 Jeffreys, and Wyville Thomson should, both collectively and 

 individually, have calmly jettisoned the name Calveria hystrix, 

 which they originally proposed for an Asteroid, and should in the 

 very next year have accepted it, not for anything allied to 

 PourtaJesiu, as we are given to understand was their first intention, 

 but for an entirely different form of Echinoid, with which the 

 name was in no way associated in their first Report. Perhaps it 

 may be thus explained : — When Wyville Thomson lifted the 

 panting Echinothurid from the deck of the ' Porcupine,' he 

 probably at once announced his intention of calling it Calveria 

 Ivjstrir. The Report on the cruises of the ' Porcupine ' in 1869 was 

 prepared in a great hurry, chiefly by Carpenter and Jeffreys. They 

 remembered the name Calveria hystrix, but confused the 

 Echinothurid with the Pourtalesia. Then, learning at the last 

 minute from Thomson that the Pourtalesia had previously been 

 named by Agassiz, they, Avishing to preserve the name Calveria 

 hystrix, transferred it to an Asteroid. After the Report was 

 published, Wyville Thomson saw that his colleagues had made a 

 mistake, and explained to them that the Echinoid for wliich he 

 had proposed the name Calveria hystrix was not the Pourtalesia. 

 Consequently, in their next Report, Carpenter and Jeffreys tacitly 

 admitted their error by restoring the name Calveria to the 

 Echinothurid, 



Later in the year 1871 [not before April], Professor A. Agassiz 

 (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. ii. p. 457'i described a minute sea-urchin 

 collected by Pourtales, and ended his account with these words : — 

 " A specimen of a genus closely allied to Asthenosoma, Grube, has 

 been dredged by the ' Porcupine ' Expedition off Cape Wrath and 

 south of Cape Finistere, off Tigo ; I presume this [young sea-urchin] 

 will prove to be the young of it. Professor Wyville Thomson will 

 soon describe this species as Calveria hystrix." Although a 

 description of the young is given by Agassiz, it can hardly give 

 validity to the name C. hystrix. The actual description by Thomson 

 appeared in his paper "On the Echinidea of the 'Porcupine' 

 Deep-sea Dredging Expedition "" (Proc. Roy. Soc. xx. No. 137, 

 pp. 491-497; 1872, not before July). He there (p. 494) 

 established and diagnosed the Echinothurid genus Calveria, and 

 briefly diagnosed two species — C. hystrix, " one specimen in deep 

 water off the Butt of the Lews," and C. fenestrata, " two specimens 

 from the coast of Portugal, and fragments in deep water off the 



