British Species allied thereto. 473 



of the Invertebrata of the Firth of Forth. They say of A. 

 violacea that they " have often obtained this species or variety 

 in the Firth, and have always been inclined to regard it as a 

 mere variety of the widely distributed and polymorphic 

 Asterias rubens. At present, however, we have followed 

 Mr. Norman and Professor Perrier in giving it the rank of a 

 separate species." 



The only foreign writer who in recent years has discussed 

 the characters of A. violacea with a good faunistic knowledge 

 is, I think, M. Fischer *, who writes under A. violacea : — 

 " Hab. Avec l'espece prece'dente [i. e. A. rubens, which is 

 found on " toutes les cotes de sud-ouest de la France "], dont 

 elle n'est peut-etre qu'une varidte, ainsi que le supposent 

 Miiller et Troschel ; neanmoins, sa coloration est constante, 

 ses tubercules sont plus petits, ses bras plus etroits, sa con- 

 sistance moins charnue," &c. But it cannot, I fear, be said 

 that this is a very satisfactory statement of the specific points. 



The very latest mention of Asterias violacea which I know 

 is to be found in Mr. Hoyle's paper on the fauna of the 

 Clyde, for which I am, I believe, responsible f. The speci- 

 mens which I was led to suppose to be A. violacea belong, I 

 am now inclined to think, to a distinct species, which I pro- 

 pose to describe immediately. 



I was at first in considerable difficulties as to what various 

 authors meant by A. violacea. The British Museum collec- 

 tion contains but few specimens of A. violacea determined 

 to be such ; there is one specimen, connected with which is 

 a label in the handwriting of Prof. E. Forbes, which, if it 

 be not A. rubens, is certainly one of the numberless varieties 

 to which reference has just been made. The specimen from 

 Plymouth Sound which, in his ' Catalogue of British Padiata,' 

 Dr. Gray refers to A. violacea, is, if I may use the word, 

 certainly A. rubens $. There is a specimen about which 

 it is very difficult to speak certainly — Dr. Gray registered 

 it as A. violacea and labelled it A. rubens. And, lastly, 

 there is an example from the Faroe Islands determined 

 probably by Dr. Liitken, which may be safely said to be A. 

 rubens, though it is named A. violacea. 



Not one of these specimens therefore would justify the 

 student in asserting that A. violacea is to be distinguished 



* Act. Soc. Linn. Bordeaux, xxvii. (1809), p. 365. 



t I must beg, however, to add that I do not accept any responsibility 

 for the " distribution " assigned to this " species " and to "A. ?-ubens" 

 though I am far from saying that it is not correct. 



X I may confirm this by a saying of Prof. Stewart that A. violacea is 

 not found at Plymouth. 



