344 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1080 



material collected by the following special ex- 

 peditions, which has been sent to Mr. Clark 

 from time to time for description: Ingolf 

 (Danish), Greenland and Northwest Atlantic; 

 Danish expeditions to Siam and to the Danish 

 West Indies; Investigator and Golden Grown 

 (Indian), Indian Ocean; Helga (Irish), West 

 Ireland; Sihoga (Dutch), East Indies; Gauss 

 (German) Antarctic; Gazelle (German), East 

 Indies and Australia; Golden Hind (Japan- 

 ese) ; Endeavor (Australia). It may be re- 

 marked in passing that in consideration of 

 the work done upon the collections of these 

 various expeditions, a liberal portion of the 

 specimens has in all cases been left in Mr. 

 Clark's hands, which have been placed by him 

 in the National Museum ; and that as a result 

 of these accessions this museum now possesses 

 a far more extensive and varied collection of 

 the Eecent Crinoids than any other institution 

 in the world. 



The author's method of treatment, and the 

 classification proposed by him, have gained 

 general acceptance by the leading authorities 

 upon the recent crinoids, and his new genera 

 have been adopted in practise by Dr. Hubert 

 Lyman Clark, of the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology, Cambridge; and in Europe by Dr. 

 Theodor Mortensen, of Copenhagen; Pro- 

 fessor Ludwig Doederlein, of Strassburg; Dr. 

 August Eeichensperger, of Bonn; Professors 

 Eene Koehler and C. Vasey, of Lyons. Dr. 

 Mortensen and Professor Doederlein turned 

 over the extensive Danish and German collec- 

 tions under their control to Mr. Clark for de- 

 scription ; and the magnificent collections made 

 by the Marine Survey steamers of the Indian 

 government were placed in his hands for study 

 and publication upon the suggestion of Dr. 

 E. A. Bather, the distinguished crinoid author- 

 ity of the British Museum. 



In the way of technical equipment for this 

 work Mr. Clark has unusual advantages. In 

 addition to a general zoological training he had 

 the benefit of experience in collecting birds 

 and insects in Europe, the West Indies and 

 South America. After this he served as nat- 

 uralist upon the steamer Allatross of th« U. S. 

 Fish Commission during a cruise of some 15,- 



000 miles, prosecuting extensive and continual 

 dredgings along the coasts of Alaska, the Aleu- 

 tian Islands, Kamschatka, Japan and Korea, 

 and returning via the Hawaiian Islands. On 

 these voyages vast numbers of crinoids were 

 taken, and the personal knowledge of their 

 occurrence and distribution thus gained by the 

 future author enlisted his interest in the in- 

 tensive study of these organisms, to which he 

 has since given his chief attention. By way of 

 further necessary preparation Mr. Clark in 

 1910 visited the chief museums of Europe, and 

 studied at first hand all the collections of his- 

 toric interest containing types and other ma- 

 terial used by previous authors from Lamarck 

 and MiiUer to those of the present day, includ- 

 ing the specimens from the Challenger and 

 other British exploring steamers which had 

 been studied by Sir Wyville Thomson and the 

 two Carpenters. Detailed reports of the ex- 

 amination of several of these collections were 

 published in the Proceedings of the National 

 Museum, and the Smithsonian Miscellaneous 

 Collections, and in journals of the museums 

 visited. 



The present volume, as already stated, is to 

 a large extent introductory, and is chiefly de- 

 voted to the comatulids, or unstalked crinoids. 

 After a very full historical introduction, a 

 table of the terms employed in the description 

 of a comatulid, and a discussion of the rela- 

 tive status of the crinoids as a zoological unit, 

 there is an instructive explanation of the 

 proper way to study a comatulid for purpose 

 of identification. Then follows an elaborate 

 treatise upon the structure and anatomy of 

 the crinoids, in the course of which many new 

 facts ascertained from dissections and other 

 observations by the author are brought out. 

 The illustrations, embracing a total of 603 

 figures, are prepared with great care for the 

 purpose of definite information. With some 

 experience in this line as to the fossil crinoids, 

 the present writer is able to bear testimony to 

 the immense labor involved in the preparation 

 of these figures, especially those illustrating 

 the minute anatomy of the crinoid skeleton, 

 drawn by the author himself. No such lucid 

 representation of these structures for the re- 



