THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[SIXTH SERIES.] 

 No. 42. JUNE 1891. 



L1V. — Asterias rubens and the British Species allied thereto. 

 By Prof. F. Jeffkey Bell, M.A., Sec. K.M.S. 



[Plates XIV. & XV.] 



The definition of Starfishes in terms which shall, on the one 

 hand, be intelligible because brief, and on the other accurate 

 because complete, is perhaps as difficult an undertaking as any 

 in systematic zoology. In some cases the amount of variation 

 is so extraordinary that it is necessary to preface any defini- 

 tions which one may be so presumptuous as to offer with some 

 words of explanation. Asterias rubens is a case in point ; it 

 is, indeed, a subject which has already been treated of by many 

 writers, and I will therefore be as concise as I know how. 

 The reader may be assured that what is here put before him, 

 even if it appear to him prolix, is but a summary of facts 

 slowly acquired and long looked at from various points of 

 view. 



I shall, I am afraid, be found to differ from the conclusions 

 on different points to which Canon Norman on the one hand 

 or Mr. Sladen on the other have or would have arrived ; but 

 the discrimination of species is after all a matter of individual 

 judgment — or the lack of it. 



It will be remembered that a number of naturalists have 

 Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 6. Vol. vii. 32 



