CATALOGUE OF RECENT OPHIURANS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



On July 17, 1865, there appeared, as the first quarto publication of the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology, an illustrated catalogue of the collection of 

 ophiurans, prepared by Theodore Lyman. This catalogue, and his subsequent 

 publications, made Mr. Lyman the world's authority on that group of animals 

 and led to the accumulation in the Museum of an extraordinary amount of 

 material illustrative of the group. After Mr. Lyman's death in 1897 Mr. 

 Agassiz continued to add to the collection, and during the past ten years 

 exchanges with various museums have greatly increased the number of species 

 represented. It seems particularly desirable therefore that a catalogue of 

 this collection as it is today should be published this year as a fitting recognition 

 of the fiftieth anniversary of Mr. Lyman's important contribution to science. 



Since the collection of ophiurans contains representatives of more than 

 half the known species, it has seemed worth while to also include in this cata- 

 logue aU of the species not represented in the collection and thus bring together 

 in one volume all the known hving ophiurans. It has not been possible to 

 include any reference to the Fossil forms. While this is to be regretted, knowl- 

 edge of those forms is still too incomplete to make their inclusion essential 

 to a proper arrangement of the groups. Indeed our knowledge of the compara- 

 tive morphology of the Recent ophiurans is still so imperfect that it will be 

 some tune before their interrelationships are well understood. But a great 

 step forward has been taken by Mr. H. Matsumoto in his recently published 

 paper, A new classification of the Ophiuroidea (Proc. Acad. nat. sci. Phila- 

 delphia, 1915). In the main, this new classification has been adopted in the 

 present paper since it seems to be based upon careful deductions from com- 

 parative morphology. It must not be inferred that in those instances where 

 I have not followed Matsumoto, I indicate a belief that he is wrong. It merely 



