COMPTONIA ELEGANS. 71 



2. COMPTONIA ELEGANS, Gray. PI. XVII, figs 4 and 4 a. 



COMPTONIA ELEGANS, Gray, 1840. Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. vi, 



p. 278. 

 STELLASTER ELEGANS, Forbes, 1848. Mem. Geol. Surv. Gt. Brit., vol. ii, 



p. 476. 

 Forbes, 1850. In Dixon's Geology and Fossils of 



the Tertiary and Cretaceous Formations 



of Sussex, London, p. 336, pi. xxii, fig. 9. 

 COMPTONIA ELEGANS, Morris, 1854. Catalogue of British Fossils, 2nd ed., 



p. 50. 

 Dujardin et Hupi', 1862. Hist. Nat. Zooph. 



Echiu. (Suites a. Buffon), p. 408. 

 STELLASTEB ELEGANS, Forbes, 1878. In Dixon's Geology of Sussex 



(new edition, Jones), pp. 369, 370, 



pi. xxii, fig, 9. 



Specific Characters. Disc strongly convex, covered with small polygonal 

 plates. Actinal interradial areas large. Arms well produced, the major radius 

 being at least three times as long as the minor radius. Interbrachial arcs 

 paraboloid. 



Material. The specimen figured by Dixon, at that time in the Bowerbank 

 Collection, is now preserved in the British Museum of Natural History (E. 2567). 

 Both dorsal and ventral aspects are exposed. Another specimen showing an 

 impression of the ventral surface exists in the Oxford University Museum. 



Dixon's specimen, however, can hardly be the type, since Gray (1840) stated that 

 the specimens described by him were in the British Museum or in the collection 

 of the Zoological Society. Forbes (1848) refers only to specimens in the British 

 Museum and the collection of the Marquess of Northampton. No part of the 

 Bowerbank Collection is known to have come to the British Museum before 1865. 

 The type specimen therefore must be either lost or still unrecognised in the 

 national collection. Since it was never figured it could never be identified with 

 certainty. It is therefore advisable to take the specimen E. 2567 as type. 



Description. The disc is high in the central and radial regions. In the inter- 

 radial areas, however, post-mortem changes have caused a collapse of the test 

 and the consequent production of deep triangular depressions. The plates 

 covering the disc are minute, polygonal, and closely fitting. The centrale is the 



