A NEW UNSTALKED CRINOID FROM THE PHILIP- 

 PINE ISLANDS. 



By Austin Hobart Clark, 



Assistant Curator, Division of Marine Invertebrates, U. S. National Museum. 



In a preliminary account of a collection of comatulids from the 

 Philippine Islands I recorded a specimen of Comaster multijida as 

 having been taken by the LT. S. Bureau of Fisheries steamer Albatross 

 near Port Dos Amigos, Tawi Tawi. This specimen fits the available 

 descriptions of C. multifida exactly; but recently, during a visit to 

 Paris, I was enabled to examine the type of Miiller's species, and I 

 found, much to my surprise, that it is quite a different thing from 

 what I had supposed. 



Comaster multifida is very closely related to C. typica, but it is a 

 smaller species with a much smaller number of arms ; these are about 

 forty in number and show, so far as it is developed, the same scheme 

 of arm division characteristic of C. typica} The centrodorsal is not 

 so much reduced as it is in C. typica, and usually bears a few cirri. 



The Comaster variabilis described by Prof. F. J. Bell in 1884 is 

 founded upon specimens both of C. typica and of C. multifida, the 

 type being one of the former. 



In the Challenger report Carpenter placed Comaster multifida in his 

 "Parvicirra Group," far removed from C typica, which was the type 

 of his "Typica Group;" although I recognized the fact that both 

 multifida and variabilis belonged in the genus Cornaster, the wide 

 separation of the forms, and the important structural difference^ 

 shown by Carpenter, prevented me from detecting their fundamental 

 agreement with C. typica, which was at once evident upon examina- 

 tion of the types. 



C. multifida was supposed to differ radically from C. typica in having 

 the ossicles of the division series united by synarthry instead of by 

 syzygy. It is true that the ossicles of the division series are united 

 by synarthry in C. multifida, but I have recently shown that the sup- 

 posed syzygy which unites these ossicles in C. typica is not a syzygy 

 at all, but a peculiarly modified synarthry, possessing many of the 

 characters of a syzygy, a type of articulation for which I suggested 

 the name pseudosyzygy. 



I This is shown in Professor Doderlein's figure (Denkschr. Ges. Jena, vol. 8, 1898, pi. 36, fig. 4, " Actino- 

 metra belli") of a young specimen. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 41— No. 1849. 



' 171 



