56 DR. p. H. CARPENTER ON SOME ARCTIC COMATUL^. 



Polar station in JanMayen, the principal Crinoid occurring there 

 being a large Antedon which he referred at once to A. proUxa *. 

 He also obtained a second, but less mature individual, two others 

 quite young, and two Pentacrinoids, which last " vollkommen niit 

 den Beschreibungen iibereinstimmen, die Sars in seinen ' Memoires 

 des Crinoides vivants ' gibt, und auf Taf. v. und vi. abbildet. Die 

 von Jan Mayen mitgebrachten Exemplaren entsprechen dem Ent- 

 wickluugsstadium, wie es Sars auf Taf. v. fig. 9 entwirft," The 

 figure referred to represents, I need hardly say, the Pentacrinoid 

 stage of Antedon Sarsii, now known as A. tenellaf ; and we shall 

 have to consider later on whether the correspondence between the 

 Jan Mayen larvae and those of A. tenella really is so complete as 

 Fischer supposed. He also states that the two young specimens 

 mentioned above " tragen sammtliche von Diiben & Koren und 

 den spateren Autoren fiir Antedon Sarsii an^egebenen charak- 

 terischen Merkmale ;" but he does not seem to have ever directly 

 compared them with examples of this well-known Scandinavian 

 type, of which the Vienna Museum possesses numerous examples. 

 This would have been a more satisfactory means of identification 

 than the use of descriptions written over forty years ago and, as 

 is only natural, insufficient for the purposes of specific discrimi- 

 nation in these later times. But although Fischer neglected to 

 compare his youngest individuals from Jan Mayen with typical 

 examples of Antedon tenella, he did compare his two largest 

 individuals of A. prolixa with the two specimens from the 

 ' Tegetthoff"' Expedition which von Marenzeller had considered to 

 be large examples of A. Sarsii (tenella'), having longer cirri with 

 more numerous joints than the typical Scandinavian form. He 

 was good enough to send them to me for examination early in 

 1881, and at that time I did not see how otherwise to regard 

 them, as I had not then seen A. prolixa, and the possibility of 

 their being immature forms of this type did not occur to me, 

 though I now know that such is the case. 



Fischer, therefore, relying upon the identification by von 

 Marenzeller and myself of the two 'Tegetthoff' specimens with 

 Antedon Sarsii (tenella), and finding his two largest examples of 

 A. prolixa from Jan Mayen to agree closely with the former pair, 

 naturally concluded that the latter should also receive the same 



* " Echinodei'men von Jan Mayen," Die Oesterreichische Polarstation Jan 

 Mayen, Bd. iii. 1886, p. 29. 



t See the Eeport on the ' Challenger' Comatiilae, p. 172. 



