690 DR. W. B. CAEPENTER ON THE STBUCTTJEE, PHYSIOLOGY, AND 



the whole life of the animal ; and the several cirrlii of the same individual often pre- 

 senting very marked differences in size and proportions (§§ 26-30). Even a character 

 which in the first instance appeared so definite as the presence of interradial plates in one 

 type (as in the Comatula Jimlriata of J. S. Miller), and their entire absence in another 

 (the Comatula rosacea of Fleming and Edwaed Forbes, the Antedon decameros of Gray, 

 the A. rosaceus of Norman, Wtville Thomson, and myself), has proved unreliable, as 

 I shall hereafter fully explain (§ 39). And thus I am led to suspect that the range 

 of variation in this type is very wide, and that the more extended the comparison of 

 specimens from different localities and from different depths, the more reason there will 

 appear for assigning only a varietal rank to several types which are at present accounted 

 different species. 



7. As there can be no reasonable doubt that the type which forms the subject of this 

 memoir is the one described by Linck' under the name Stella decacnemos rosacea, 

 " propter corporis fabricam rosse similem," and as the treatise of Lixck is the foundation 

 of all our scientific knowledge of the group of Sea-stars, his specific name has a prefer- 

 ential claim to our acceptance, which has been already recognized by Fleming', 

 Blainville^ and Edward Forbes*. With Edward Forbes I am disposed to consider 

 the Stella decacnemos harbata of Linck (ihe Jimhriata of Barrelier, whose figure and 

 description he cites) as specifically identical with his rosacea, although Fleming, 

 Lamarck, and Blainville rank it as distinct ; while Dujardin^ (upon what grounds I 

 cannot discover) ranks it with the Actinometra pectinata of Jon. Muller. It is im- 

 possible to say with certainty whether the Decacnemos crocea zaffarana Neajpolitanorum 

 of Linck, the ^eKaZaavaKTivoei^m of Fabius Columna, is anything else than a larger form 

 of the same, the description given of it not being sufficiently minute to enable its specific 

 characters to be positively determined ; and it may not improbably be the Antedon 

 Milleri of Norman and Wtville Thomson. With Professor Edward Forbes, also, I 

 consider both the Asterias bifida and the Asterias decacnemos of Pennant", and the 

 Asterias pectinata of Adams^ to belong to the same specific type, since their descriptions 

 and figures do not accord with the characters of either of the other British Comatulce : 

 by Lamarck, however, the Asterias decacnemos of Pennant and the Asterias pectinaf a of 

 Adams are identified with the Decacnemos barbata of Linck, which he cites as Comatula 

 barbata. Our Antedon rosaceus is undoubtedly the Alecto Europcea of Leach*.; and 

 there cannot, I think, be any question of its identity with the Comatula Mediteii'anea 

 of Lamarck". Under one or other of these two names this type is referred to in the 

 principal Continental Monographs in which it is specially mentioned; the first being 

 used by Professor Jon. Muller in his memoir " Ueber den Bau des Pentacrinus Caput- 



' Do Stellis Marinis, p. 55, tab. xxxvii. fig. 66. ' British Animals, p. 490. 



' Manuel d'Actinologie, p. 248. ■* History of British Starfishes, p. 5. 



' Histoire Naturelle des Zoophytes Echinodermes, p. 210. " British Zoology, vol. iv. pp. 65, 66. 



' linnean Transactions, vol. v. p. 10. ' Zoological Miscellanies, vol. ii. 1814, p. 62. 



' Animaux sans Vertebres, 2nd Ed., torn. iii. p. 210. 



