Indian Dee2)-sea Asieroidea. 109 



spinelets, and every alternate plate has a prominent intra- 

 anibulacral ridge bearing a row of three spines, the inner- 

 most of which carries a single large pedicellaria. Mouth- 

 plates armed with spines similar to those of the ordinary 

 adambulacrals. 



Tube-feet quadriserial. 



Madreporiform plate small and much hidden by neigh- 

 bouring spinelets, with obsolescent sculpture. 



Colour in life '' red ochre " [G. M. Giles). 



Andaman Sea, 490 to 500 fathoms. 



43. Zoroaster squameus^ sp. n. 



Kays 5. R = about 11 r. R=135 millim. in the 

 type specimen. 



Disk pentagonal, flat-topped, distinctly delimited from the 

 rays by a circumferential series of large tumid plates ; its 

 abactinal surface bears concentric series of massive tumid 

 stellate plates — a dorso-central, five basal interradials, five 

 primary radials (the largest of all), and twenty-five marginals 

 arranged as in Z. Gilesii] all these plates bear distant 

 deciduous granules, and the intervals between them display 

 papulse and numerous small pedicellarioj. 



Rays long, tapering, compressed, strongly convex abac- 

 tinally, Avith thirteen to fifteen parallel longitudinal rows of 

 plates (which also falL into transversely parallel series), each 

 row, with the exception of the mid-radial row, strongly imbri- 

 cate over the row below. The following is their arrange- 

 ment : — (i.) a mid-radial row of non-imbricate plates, hardly 

 enlarged, and flush with the surface of the ray ; flanked on 

 each side by (ii.) six or seven rows of scale-like plates which 

 overlap one another from above like tiles on a roof, those of 

 the upper four rows being the more massive and conspicuous, 

 those of the lower two or three rows being thin and crushed 

 up beneath one another. The mid-radial row of plates 

 appears to be quite smooth and unarmed ; the plates of the 

 three or four upper (abactinad) rows on each side are quite 

 smooth, but bear each a more or less deciduous procumbent 

 median spine, and in the distal half of the ray some mar- 

 ginal pedieellariffi ; the plates of tlie three lower (actinad) 

 rows on each side are very closely covered with acumbent 

 scale-like spinelets, with a long procumbent, needle-like, 

 deciduous median spine. Papulse occur, accompanied each 

 by a pedicellaria, in an incompletely double row on each side 

 of the mid-radial row of plates ; and between the second and 



