834 MR. F. p. BEDFORD ON KOLOTHURIANS [NoV, 15, 



9. Report on the Holothurians collected by Mr. J. Stanley- 

 Gardiner at Funafuti and Rotuma. By F. P. Bedford, 

 B.A., King's College^ Cambridge '. 



[Received October 13, 1898.] 

 (Plates LII. & LIU.) 



My thanks are due to Prof. F. J. Bell aud Mr. J. Stanley 

 Gardiner for giving me the opportunity of examining and de- 

 sei'ibing the Holothurians collected by the latter at Rotuma and 

 Funafuti in the S. Pacific. I have freely availed myself of the 

 suggestions of both Prof. Bell and Mr. Gardiner, and am particu- 

 larly grateful to the former for allowing me the use of a room 

 to work in at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, 

 where I have been able to compare the specimens with the collec- 

 tion in the Museum, and where in consequence the task of identi- 

 fication has been much simplified. Prof. Bell, too, has kindly gone 

 through the whole paper and corrected the proofs. 



Any errors or shortcomings in the present paper I am of course 

 solely responsible for. 



The most generally useful books for the determination of species 

 I found to be K. Lampert, ' Die Seevvalzen,' in Semper's Reisen im 

 Arch. Philipp. Bd. iv. 1885, and H. Theel, ' ChaUenger ' Reports, 

 pt. 39, Holothurioidea, ii. 1885. 



The genera have undergone considerable revision since 1885, 

 and the best recent diagnosis of the Holothuriidae is given by 

 Prof. Ludwig in Memoirs of Mus. of Comp. Zool. Harvard College, 

 vol. xvii. no. 3, 1894, p. 37, which may be regarded as a supple- 

 ment to his account in Bronn's Thier-Reich, Bd. ii. Abt. 3, Bde. i. 

 1889/92, pp. 327-361 =. 



I have adopted this classification, with the single exception that 

 I have followed Prof. Bell in substituting the name Actiyiojjtfga 

 for Mulhria for the reasons stated by him (Ann. & Mag. iVat. 

 Hist. xix. (1887) p. 392, and xx. p. 148). 



The works by Dr. Lampert and Dr. Theel were in nearly all 

 cases used in determining species, and I have therefore thought 

 it unnecessary to repeat the references in each case in the text. 

 I have been unable to obtain Dr. Sluiter's paper in Bijdrag tot de 

 Dierk. Afl. xvii. 1895, entitled " Die Holothurien-Sammlung des 

 Museums zu Amsterdam," and have had to rely on abstracts in 

 Zool. Centralblatt, ii., and 'Zoological Record' for 1895; in all 

 other cases I have had access to the original papers. 



I have used the terms " dorsal " and " ventral " in the conven- 

 tional analogical sense for " bivium " and " trivium " respectively. 



^ Communicated by F. Jeffrey Bell, M.A., F.Z.S. 



= Dr. H. Ostergren (OiVers. af Kgl. Vet.-Ak. Forbandliugar, Iv. no. 2, 1898, 

 p. Ill) and M. Perrier (Comptes Rendiis, t. csxvi. no. 23, 1898, p. 1664) 

 have somewhat amplified Prof. Ludwig's classification of the Synaptidas and 

 the Synallactinae respectively. 



