A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



" To t/ie solid 'round 

 0/ Nature trusts the mind -which builds for aye." — Wordsworth 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER i, 1SS3 



ZOOLOGICAL REPORTS OF THE VOYAGE OF 

 H.M.S. " CHALLENGER " 



Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. 

 " Challenger" during the Years 1873-76, nnder the 

 Command of Capt. George S. Nares and Capt. F. T. 

 Thomson. Prepared under the Superintendence of the 

 late Sir C. Wyville Thomson, Director of the Civihan 

 Scientific Staff on board, and now of John Murraj', one 

 of the Naturalists of the Expedition. Zoology — Vol. V., 

 1SS2 ; Vol. VI., 1882 ; Vol. VII., 1883. (Published by 

 Order of Her Majesty's Government.) 



'"PHE editor has made most excellent progress in the 

 -L Avork of publishing the Reports of the scientific 

 results of the voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the 

 past year, as the three bulky quarto volumes now before 

 u; well indicate. V"ol. V. contains an elaborate Report on 

 the Ophiuroidea by Theodore Lyman, who has made this 

 group so long his special study, and who has in this 

 monograph given us a most elaborate and beautifully 

 illustrated contribution to science. The memoir contains 

 the description of some twenty-one genera and of 170 

 species, but as several already described species were also 

 collected, Mr. Lyman has judiciously given not only all 

 these but also the names of all others previously described, 

 arranged under their genera, constituting therefore this 

 Report a more or less complete monograph of the Ophiu- 

 roidea. There are very elaborate tables of distribution, 

 geographical, bathymetrical, and thermal, with brief re- 

 marks on their indications, and at the end of these is a 

 note on the fossil forms and their relations to those living. 

 In the descriptive part of the monograph Mr. Lyman has 

 ventured to use simple words as often as possible, so as 

 not to add to " the jargon in which zoology is now 

 smothering." 



Amid the three hundred pages of description of species 

 there is of necessity little that will bear transcribing in a 

 general notice of this important work ; and still among 

 them we find the following, which in the writer's mind 

 awakened similar emotions to those referred to by Mr. 

 Vol. XXIX. — No. 731 



Lyman: — "In my noteboo'-^ of 1S61 I find, ' Euryale 

 e.xiguum, Lamk., original of Peron and Leseur, 1S03, 

 young.' This prosaic line is poetical to me. It takes me 

 back to the Jardin des Plantes as it was twenty years ago, 

 and I can see the laboratories of the ' mollusques et 

 zoophytes' where I studied under the kindly direction of 

 old Valenciennes. He has gone, and so has his successor 

 Deshayes, and their place is now worthily held by Pcrrier, 

 who was a very young man when first I knew him. But 

 still that poor little broken Astrophyton exignum lies on 

 its shelf, the survivor. It was with a real emotion that 

 in unpacking the Challenger collection I drew from a 

 large jar two fine specimens. I felt like a scholar who 

 had found a duplicate of the Codex argenteus. After 

 more than two generations the unique treasure of the 

 Jardin des Plantes has at last other representatives, and 

 to celebrate its rediscovery I could do no less than give a 

 figure of the animal " (Plate 47). 



So far as the geographical distribution of the group is 

 concerned, it would appear that although deep-sea species 

 are more inclined to extensive wanderings than those 

 frequenting shallows, yet, speaking generally, they offer 

 similar differences. Among littoral forms there are those 

 which are found all over the great ocean from the Sand- 

 wich Islands to the east coast of Africa, and even south 

 to the Cape of Good Hope. One species, Ainphiura 

 sqi/aniata, is found in the North and South Atlantic, at 

 the Cape of Good Hope, and in Australia. Others, again, 

 are considerably restricted ; for example, the abundant 

 fauna of the Carribean Sea, which reaches only Brazil 

 on the south and the Carolinas en the north. Ophiacantlta 

 vivipara and Gorgonocephalus pourtalesii going to 140 

 and 600 fathoms, are remarkable for their extension in 

 longitude, being found from the Kerguelen Islands on the 

 west to the east coast of South America. As to the very 

 deep-water species, Ophioinusium lymani occurs well up 

 in the North Atlantic, in the extreme South Atlantic, near 

 New Zealand, off Japan, and off the south-west coast of 

 South America. Ophiacantha cosmica is found off the 

 Brazil coast, between the Cape of Good Hope and the 

 Kerguelen Islands, off the south-west coast of South 

 America, and at intermediate points. Some of these 

 deep-sea species are, however, quite restricted in their 



