ON NEW ZEALAND HOLOTHURIANS. 95 



Some Additions to oui' Knowledge of the New Zealand Holotliurians. Bj 

 Arthur Dendy, D.Sc, Sec.L.S., Honoraiy Member o£ the New Zealand 

 Institute, Professor of Zoology in King's College, University of London ; 

 and E. Hindle, A.R.C.Sc.Lond., Assistant-Demonstrator of Zoology in 

 the Royal College of Science, London. 



(Plates 11-14 aud 3 Text-figures.) 



[Read 6tli June, 1907.] 



The following pages contain an account of a collection of Holothurians 

 brought from New Zealand by one of us some years ago, and may be 

 regarded as a continuation of the " Observations on the Holothurians of 

 New Zealand " published in the Linnean Society's Journal (Zoology) in 

 1897 (vol. xxvi. p. 22). Since that date only three species have been added 

 to this section of the New-Zealand fauna, viz. Cucumaria Filholi, PliyllopJiorus 

 anatinus, and Caudina pulchella, all of which are described by Professor Remy 

 Perrier in his memoir on the Antarctic Holothurians of the Natural History 

 Museum of Paris *. It appears to us, however, to be very doubtful whether 

 these three species can be maintained, and we incline to the belief that they 

 are synonymous respectively with Cucumaria alba (Hutton), Pliyllopliorus 

 longidentis (Hutton), and Caudina coriacea (Hutton). This question, however, 

 need not be discussed at present. 



We may also note in this place that a previously doubtful species of 

 Hutton, Cucumaria turhinata, has been re-examined, from the type specimen, 

 by Herdman and Pearson, and has been recorded from Ceylon. Pearson 

 describes and figures the species in his paper on the Ceylon Holothurians f. 



In this paper we venture to propose no less than six new species, viz., 

 Stichopus simidans, Pliyllopliorus dearmatus, P seudocucumis hicolumnatus, 

 Chirodota gigas, Chirodota geminifera, and Rliabdomolgus novce-zealandice ; 

 while Holotliuria difficilis, Semper, is recorded from Norfolk Island. Of 

 these by far the most remarkable is Rliabdomolgus 7iova;-zealandice. A 

 description of this species was actually prepared by one of us in 1896, based 

 on a single specimen, but was not published at the time because it was 

 thought that the absence of spicules, characteristic of the genus Rliabdo- 

 molgus, might be due in the case of our specimen to the solvent action of the 

 formalin in which the specimen was preserved. An experiment made on the 

 spicules of Chirodota dunedinensis showed that the spicules of that species 

 were dissolved in formalin (probably owing to the decomposition of the 

 latter) ; therefore it was considered unsafe to rely upon formalin material, 



* Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Zoologie, 1905, p. 1. 

 t Herdman's Pearl-Oyster Reports, Supp. No. 6, 1903. 



8* 



