OPHIURANS OF THE PHILIPPINE AND ADJACENT WATERS. 9 



In regard to these four orders and to the several families which 

 are assigned to them I have the following remarks to make : 



1. Phrynophiurida. — Matsumoto has retained in his family 

 Ophiomyxidae the genus OpModera which was separated from 

 Ophiomyxa in 1899 by Verrill. H. L. Clark did not admit the dis- 

 tinctness of OpModera, but placed in the genus Ophiomyxa both the 

 species in which there exists a border of plates at the periphery of 

 the disk and those in which such a border is absent. 



2. Loemophiurida. — The subfamily Ophiochondrinae of Matsu- 

 moto includes the three genera Ophiochoudrus, Ophiomoeris, and 

 Ophiogyptis. H. L. Clark has recognized the genus phiochondrella 

 of Verrill, 1899, which Matsumoto does not mention. Instead of 

 placing in the genus Ophiomoeris, O. obstncta Kcehler, as I had done 

 in 1904, Clark retained the genus Ophiurases, which he believed was 

 established in 1911 for this species, forgetting the previous erection 

 of the genus Ophiomoeris. But Matsumoto in his memoir of 1915 had 

 formally indicated that Ophiurases obstrictus is merely a synonym 

 of Ophiomoeris obstricta Kcehler. 



Matsumoto placed in the family Ophiacanthidae the genera Ophio- 

 tholia and Ophiomyces, which are here associated with numerous 

 other genera, such as Ophiacantha, Ophiomitra, Ophioea/max, etc. I 

 propose to retain for these two genera, which differ so markedly from 

 all the other types placed in the family Ophiacanthidae, as Verrill 

 showed in 1899, the family Ophiomycetidae established by the latter. 

 In the preceding list I have therefore separated Ophiomyces delata 

 from the other ophiacanthids and placed it in a separate family. 



The genus Ophiohelus, which Verrill made the type of the family 

 Ophiohelidae, Matsumoto placed in the Ophiomyxinae. This dis- 

 position appears to me to be quite correct. 



3. Gnathophiurida. — This order was divided by Matsumoto into 

 three families — Amphilepididae, Amphiuridae, and Ophiotrichidae. 

 The first includes, together with the genera Amphilepis and Ophio- 

 chytra, a new genus established by Matsumoto, Amphiactis, of which 

 the type is A. umbonata. In addition Matsumoto places here the 

 various species previously assigned to the genus Ophiactis, which 

 possess four or five mouth papillae — O. canescens Lyman, 0. duplicata 

 Lyman, O. patula Lyman, O. partita Kcehler, O. dissidens Kcehler, 

 and O. parata Kcehler. H. L. Clark has not recognized the family 

 Amphilepididae ; he places the six species just mentioned some in the 

 genus Ophiactis and others in the genus AmphiuWa, and he places the 

 genus Amphilepis in the family Amphiuridae. 



Personally I have considered it best to maintain the family 

 Amphilepididae, for I believe that the characters invoked by Mat- 

 sumoto in its creation, which relate principally to the structure of 



